


What Doesn't Kill You

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Hawkeye (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. References, Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha Steve, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Humor, Attempt at Humor, F/M, Feels, I Don't Even Know, M/M, Not Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Compliant, Omega Tony, Slow Build, Work In Progress, subtle D/s dynamics too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-11
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-04-20 04:23:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 78,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4773389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Guys,” she says slowly, “I think you might be fucked.” Tony’s screen splits off as Skye’s work pops onto the screen, only instead of the eagle that was S.H.I.E.L.D’s symbol it’s HYDRA's senseless octopus thing. It wasn’t even a fucking HYRDA and that pissed Tony off. Hydras had the ability to regrow heads, not multiple legs, what the fuck even was that thing? Stupid, that’s what it was, but he returns his attention to the task at hand. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s going on after that.</p><p>“What the hell do you mean we're being invaded by HYDRA?” Jemma yells.</p><p>“No,” Skye says, “you aren’t being invaded by HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D is HYDRA,” she says, giving her screens a panicky look as she tried to figure out some method of escape.</p><p>When S.H.I.E.L.D falls the agents need somewhere to go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Damsel in Distress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GoodSourceofFiber](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodSourceofFiber/gifts).



> Okay, so anyone who had read my stuff before knows I usually update like really fast, usually daily, but I just started school today (wahh), so that will not happen here. I'll try to keep the updates quick (weekly), and they probably will be until I get full on back into the swing of things, but if they slow down be understanding. Pls.
> 
> Also I stared at the word "puppies" for so long I am now fully convinced that that word does not exist in real life.

The last thing Tony had expected out of his life was to become some sort of leader to a rogue group of omegas. Okay, so maybe not rouge so much as done with society’s shit and grouped together in a small but powerful group. The downside? At least one of them managed to get captured by some government group every week and this week Hawkeye went down. Nat was pissed because he was supposed to bring back tacos and Wanda was being more angsty than usual. Despite only being a few years older than her Clint was practically her dad, or maybe like her older brother if, you know, her other older brother hadn’t gotten killed. “So it looks like an organization called S.H.E.I.L.D nabbed him, does anyone aside from me and Loki know anything about these people?” Loki looked like a kid in a candy store, which likely meant that he was about to run into his brother, Thor. For hating his guts with everything he had Loki cared about his brother quite a bit. No one told him that though, Tony did it once and Loki dumped his ass after dating for two years. Not that Tony had cared, it was a bit too serious for his liking anyways, plus the look on Loki’s face when Tony went back to his old sexual habits was extremely satisfying.

Everyone else looked confused so he sighed and moved on, “looks like their hiring scientists, Fitzsimmons, I suggest you two show up on their doorstep gift wrapped, the two of you are better than what they’re looking for and they look for the best.” Jemma grins and Fitz looks dismayed, probably because the two sucked at undercover work. “Keep it about the science,” Tony advises, “if you keep it about what you know it’ll be way easier to not blow your cover. Besides, if all goes well it’ll take a week, max.” It wasn’t like they didn’t do this on a regular basis and with organizations that were a lot scarier than S.H.E.I.L.D, Wanda was a HYDRA experiment. Actually most of them were experiments from various government organizations, Nat for example was an experiment from Russia, Bruce was dumb enough to experiment on himself, Clint was a circus experiment much to Tony’s delight. Hell, even Tony was something of an experiment with the arc reactor and all, even if it was sort of self-inflicted, much to Wanda’s delight.

“Hey, Wanda, you wanna be the one to prison break Clint?” She whirls around from her pacing and snarls at him.

“Go fuck yourself,” she growls in a thick Slovakian accent and stalks off before Tony can get her real answer.

“I’m gunna take that as a yes, Nat I’ve sent some blueprints your way but be aware that they are limited, S.H.E.I.L.D has some very good tech and it’s good at keeping people out,” he turns to Loki, “I’m assuming Thor knows something about S.H.E.I.L.D if you’re stupid grin is anything to go by,” he doesn’t quite manage to not sound sour while addressing Loki. Damn, he was going to need to work on that, he didn’t like Loki knowing what he was thinking; he was quite gifted in exploiting weakness.

“Yes, last I checked Thor worked for them,” Loki says, losing the smile at Tony’s mention of it.

“Great, I’m assuming you can figure out a way to get information from Thor and fuck the poor guy over, again, it’s what your good at.” Damn, hiding things so wasn’t his thing. Pep always told him he was as subtle as a whale in a swimming pool, maybe she was right.

“Oh Tony, still sore I dumped you,” Loki says in a pseudo sweet voice.

Tony grits his teeth, “no, I’m sore that your head is buried so far up your own ass that you can’t handle basic facts about your near incestuous relationship with your brother,” he snaps back. Loki recoils as if he was slapped and Tony feels viciously victorious, Loki was a tough nut to crack and so far only Tony and his father proved vicious enough to do the job. Good, he deserved it anyways.

Loki stomps off and Nat sighs, stepping onto the podium Tony built not because he felt like he needed to be above everyone, he just happened to be the leader of this group and it was easier for people to see what he was pointing at if he was elevated, fuck Loki very much. “You two need to get over yourselves. In house fighting does nothing for us. Also do you think sending Fitzsimmons in is best? Remember last time?” She says, looking somewhat pained.

“Yeah, they got shoved out of a plane by that asshole. They escaped though and I think that’s what we should take away from that encounter. I mean they were dropped into the fucking ocean to die and they managed to escape, lying may not be their thing but they sure as hell know how to get themselves out of a sticky situation. Besides, sending in you or Wanda is the alternative and the last time _that_ happened was a freaking disaster.” Nat sighs because she knows that’s true, at least when Fitzsimmons went wrong they were quite about it, Nat and Wanda ended up in international news for decimating an entire city. Thankfully neither of their faces were caught on camera and rampant sexism labelled them small men instead of average sized women. Tony never thought he’d be thankful for societal double standards that marginalized various groups of people but in this business that was easy to exploit. Cheating the system, it was what he was good at, what they were all good at.    

“Come on, there were like 100 injuries and no casualties, and I’m the best at undercover work, if I leave Wanda behind I probably won’t bring down a city,” she says in a sorry attempt at reasoning.

“No, I am not taking chances on you bringing a damn city down. _Again._ Wanda or no Wanda, you go in if Fitzsimmons looks like they might die, which, considering their track record, is entirely possible. In the meantime shadow Loki, remember the last time _he_ was in the field?” A fucking alien invasion, that’s what. _Aliens_ , literal extra-terrestrials, he didn’t even care if it technically wasn’t Loki’s fault, god damn aliens came out of the fucking sky and he wasn’t having that happen twice. That was where he had gleaned some intel on S.H.E.I.L.D so there was that at least. He also managed to snatch some alien stuff up on the black market and Bruce had had a fucking field day, Tony even got kisses for that one. Loki was pissed off for a month after that, which was Tony’s favourite part of that adventure.

“Maybe you should try your hand at field work,” Nat says, raising an eyebrow.

“Ah, no. First of all I’m extremely recognizable, second of all I have done enough damage for like, ten thousand lifetimes, ask Wanda. I only go in if it’s desperately needed and only in the suit, things are safer that way. Besides, without me or Fitzsimmons who the hell is supposed to deal with the tech?” Logically speaking there were very few people who understood his systems, he made it that way on purpose in case anyone ever found their lair. Okay, so it wasn’t a lair but still, very valuable information was kept here and it wouldn’t do to have it fall into the wrong hands.

“Excuses you, what am I? Chopped liver?” Skye asks, appearing behind Nat, “I like to think I’m competent enough to tell JARVIS what to do,” she folds her arms and taps her foot.

“Fine, so Skye can run things, but that doesn’t change the fact that everyone and their dog knows who I am.” He was curious to see her solution to that, it wasn’t like he could wear a new face.

“Tony you’ve been missing for two years; no one knows who you are anymore. They’ve moved on to the next tragedy of the moment, like aliens invading New York.” She made a point he supposed, at least if he was dealing with the masses.

“But we’re talking about a super-secret government agency, while the public probably no longer cares they sure as hell would. People don’t go missing without a trace, especially when they left one hell of a blown up terrorist cell behind them, they know I got out they just don’t know where I went.” He doubted that any government agency would give up on him quite that easily, he did make weapons after all. It wasn’t like they knew that he had falsified documents leaving Stark Industries to Pepper in his absence after Nat and Clint found him. It wasn’t like they knew that Pepper’s announcement to end weapons sales was actually his decision. Poor Pepper, the backlash she’d gotten from that was awful and mostly centred around the fact that she was a woman. He was curious to see if the backlash from him saying that would be the same. He didn’t think so but people weren’t much nicer to omegas, at least Pep had the fact that she was alpha on her side no matter how little that seemed to do for the first few weeks. Then he sent her some prototypes and arc reactor technology, everyone seemed to like her after that.

“Fine, show up as you and say you got kidnapped by aliens looking to probe you, it isn’t like you’d sound crazy for suggesting that now,” Nat rolls her eyes. She hadn’t taken the alien invasion very well.

“Or shave your goatee; no one will recognize you without it. You look like a baby,” Skye snickers. Tony looks at her in horror, he couldn’t just _shave_ his goatee, he loved it, it was like… his _thing_.

“Oh my god, your face, we are shaving you down and sending you in,” Nat looks far too pleased with this.

“No, I will stay here with my facial hair and my tech and you can’t stop me!” He turns and hugs the nearest piece of tech, which unfortunately turns out to be a phone that Skye immediately pulls out of his grip. Nat drags him off literally kicking and screaming, taking way too much pleasure in his suffering.

*

Clint had managed to escape twice but Coulson’s team was good. It also helped that the fucker laid a claim bite on his ass, _sorry, it was an accident_ , and now knew what he was going to do within seconds of Clint figuring it out himself. Accident, who the hell bites someone by accident? He actually half believed it, Coulson did look genuinely ashamed of himself, and Clint made sure to exploit that. Especially since whomever Coulson’s boss was stuck him on permanent guard duty after Clint’s second escape. “Why were you in a HYDRA base,” the guy, Ward he thought his name was, asked for like the tenth time.

“I was there for the tech, which Coulson will tell you is true, I’d like to point out this is the tenth time I’ve told you this,” he says through gritted teeth. He was getting annoyed of this shit and he had limited access to information. Thankfully the stupid bond that allowed Coulson to act as a human lie detector and action guesser worked both ways and Clint happened to catch wind of Fitzsimmons getting hired on at S.H.E.I.L.D. It was amusing because apparently the two had gotten into some heated debate about what piece on Tony’s tech was better and ended up choosing something they made themselves. He figured their argument sold well if they got hired.

Coulson sighs, “he’s telling the truth,” he says, sounding exhausted. Clint got the idea he was just as done with this interrogation was Clint was.

“Why did you want HYDRA’s tech,” Ward asks, also for the tenth damn time.

“I told you, it wasn’t theirs, I was taking it back,” he doesn’t bother to hide his annoyance.

Ward opens his stupid mouth to ask another useless question but Coulson waves him off, “you’re asking the wrong questions. If the tech wasn’t HYDRA’s, whose was it?” Clint grinned, finally someone who knows what they are doing.

“It belongs to the guy I work for, kind of, I don’t actually get a salary,” he says.

“Slavery?” Ward asks, looking shockingly concerned for someone who didn’t care.

Coulson frowns, “no, he’s happy wherever he is. If you don’t get paid why be there?” he asks. So the guy seemed to know when to divert from the subject at hand.

“Because I’m valued there, unlike here. Besides, when I’m there I don’t have to deal with this shit,” He flaps his arm around at his surroundings, he was laying in the middle of a bulletproof glass cage with air holes like a giant mouse or some shit. “And no one bites, accident or otherwise.” technically that wasn’t true, there was that one time Nat tried to teach Tony how to fight but he doesn’t count that.

“How is it possible that you’ve gleaned more information in two minutes that I have in two hours?” Ward asks, looking annoyed.

“All I’ve learned is that his boss, whoever they are, treats him better than we have,” Coulson looks at Ward like he’s an idiot. Score one for Coulson for realizing that so far his info was useless.

“I don’t think we’ve treated him all that badly considering he’s probably HYDRA,” Ward says, giving Clint suspicious looks.

Coulson shakes his head, “Ward our first reaction was to beat the hell out of him, bite him, and throw him in a cage. We sure as hell haven’t treated him well, sorry about that,” Coulson says to him, “and as for HYDRA… I don’t think so. When we got to that base all the security was already taken out, with arrows no less, and when we found Clint here he had archery equipment. Why take out his own guys? And besides, HYRDA isn’t exactly known for treating anyone well, but especially not omegas.” Coulson had a point, Clint thought, but Ward’s face said all it needed to about the situation. He didn’t believe Clint was capable of taking down a HYDRA base himself. Funny thing was that it was Ward who came in with a team, Clint hadn’t needed the backup. Capture notwithstanding he did what he was supposed to.

“You think he took out the guards?” Ward’s voice was practically drenched in disbelief. Irritation rose quickly before it was tamped down and under control. Clint was rather surprised to find that irritation wasn’t his own.

“He took out five HYDRA agents trying to escape from us,  he took out three S.H.E.I.L.D agents after that, and let’s not forget he’s escaped twice, making it out of the facility both times. It is not wise to underestimate him based on archaic beliefs that being an omega somehow makes you useless,” Coulson’s voice rose higher at the end of that rant, almost yelling but not quite. His irritation rose too, but fell quickly after that. Apparently Coulson had poor control over his emotions in regards to this subject.

“Funny that you don’t ascribe to archaic beliefs about alphas and omegas yet you bit me,” Clint says, feeling a bit of pride when he felt shame rise in Coulson’s mind.  

“Oh would you shut up about that?” Ward snaps.

Clint snorts, “That guy is a loose cannon,” he says to Coulson, “You seem to be awful worried about me being HYDRA, have you wondered about him?” Clint asks, raising an eyebrow. He had good intel that suggested that Ward was, indeed, HYDRA but it was Ward’s reaction that cemented his opinions.

Ward punches the glass, “that is such bullshit!” he yells. It was an overreaction by far, and the slight panicky undertone in his voice indicated that at some point he was under suspicion from the people around him, namely Coulson, or at least that’s what Clint guessed.  

Clint grins and gets up, wandering closer to the glass, “I’m fucking right, your HYDRA! Nice, point for me, I’ve got this shit,” he laughs and dances around a little. Ward looks at Coulson, a little panicky, probably worried about his cover being blown.

Coulson sighs, “Sorry,” neither Clint nor Ward even noticed the gun in Coulson’s hand until it goes off, shooting blue liquid into Ward’s face. Ward’s eyes roll back and he falls backwards to the ground.

“Oh come on, you had that and you decided to bite my ass? What kind of bullshit it this,” Clint laments, throwing his hands up and wandering back over to his cot to throw himself on it. If he’s learned anything from Tony its dramatics, especially after him and Loki split. Sometimes he and Bruce told them they were talking shit about each other just to watch what happened. Nat told them they were no longer allowed to experiment on Loki and Tony after the disaster that happened the last time they did that.

“He’s been here for almost two years working on my team and he didn’t slip up once until six months ago, since then he’s only slipped up a handful of times yet you managed to determine he was HYDRA in hours. How?” To Coulson’s credit he looked genuinely impressed with Clint. Clint couldn’t get a good read on what he was actually feeling.

“Lucky guess,” he says.

Coulson shakes his head, “I don’t believe in luck” he says and turns to walk away, “and Clint? I am genuinely sorry I bit you, I have people working to try and reverse the effects.” He’s almost at the door when Clint decides to talk.

“Go to Fitzsimmons,” he says. They developed a way to break that bond years ago; it was a bit necessary in his line of work. They got bit as often as they got captured. Thank god they all had some serious willpower or they’d never have survived being subjected to the Alpha’s Command on a regular basis.     

Coulson swears under his breath, “so the bond goes both ways, gunna have to report that.” The door closes behind him and Clint goes back to staring at the ceiling. A few minutes later a group of people come in to collect Ward off the floor, they sneer at Clint and he flips them off with a smile on his face. That seems to piss them off and that brings Clint joy.

*

Tony was pissed, “are you kidding me! You shave me down, kicking and screaming, you tell me it’s necessary, and now you’re telling me that I don’t, in fact, have to go play S.H.E.I.L.D agent to free Clint? Ohhhh, Romanov you’re going to pay for this,” he says, only half kidding. Her head was getting shaved though, maybe only half to make her look like more of an idiot.

Bruce looks up from his work station, “I don’t think it’s wise to threaten Natasha,” he says. Nat looks pleased with herself and Tony glares harder. He’d find a way around Bruce, and Nat… he’d drug her or something, he was certain he wouldn’t be able to complete his head shaving without dying otherwise. Bruce probably wouldn’t eat him for that, it was hair and that grew back, it was Nat he’d have to worry about there.

“I’ll get you,” he whispers and stalks off.

“Did you see his face,” he hears Nat all but yell at Bruce, “he looks like a fucking baby!” She bursts into laughter, Bruce laughing quietly as well. They were going _down_ for this.

He’s on his way back to the podium so he can keep an eye on Fitzsimmons when he runs into Loki, just his fucking luck. Loki looks shocked, “what the hell happened to your face?” he asks, laughing, “You look _awful_ without your goatee,” he throws his head back and starts laughing harder.

“Well the plus side is that I can grow my facial hair back and look just fucking dazzling, it isn’t as if you can grow a personality that doesn’t make everyone hate you,” Tony shrugs and walks off feeling validated when Loki’s laughter sputters to a stop.

“People only like you because you’re pretty and you have money,” Loki snarls at him.

“And people only liked you because I’m the leader of this group, at least people like me for things I actually have, not my significant other. Now what have you got Loki? An estranged brother who trusts a loaf of bread more than you, and a pissed off ex-lover who was the only reason people were willing to be within a hundred feet of you. The way I see it if the worst thing I’ve lost is my facial hair I’m doing pretty fucking good,” Tony spreads his arms wide and raises and eyebrow while walking backwards, “sorry buddy, but you lose, you lose hard.” He turns around and walks back to the podium.

He’s pressing buttons at his computer when Nat appears a few minutes later, “that was cruel, Tony.” She seriously has the gull to give him a judgmental glare.

“Oh please, Loki is just as cruel; you know that, _everyone_ knows that. Maybe it’s time someone treats him the same way he treats everyone else.” He probably should feel guilty for being cruel to Loki, Nat wasn’t wrong, but he’d always been one to hold a grudge against people who wronged him. Especially if he trusted them first, his father, Obi, Loki, they all treated him badly for things he couldn’t help and he would never forgive any of them. It was unhealthily, he knew, but he trusted very few people and when they wronged him… well, to be honest he was usually angrier with himself than the other person. He was the one dumb enough to trust them after all but that didn’t mean they didn’t deserve to suffer.  

“The only reason you can be as cruel as you can to him is because he trusted you enough to give you the information your now using as a weapon against him!” she yells, her Russian accent leaking back into her speech.

“Oh don’t act like he has the moral high ground here Natasha, you say that I’m using his trust against him but it isn’t like he hasn’t done the same. One time, Nat, one time in the two years we were together I decide to be as honest with him as I am with everyone else and tell him he loves his brother far more than he’ll ever admit. _One_ time Natasha, and his response? He dumps my ass for telling him the damn truth, and not even a very harsh one at that, I could have told him he pushes everyone away as some sort absurd form of self-harm because he hates himself. No, I tell him he cares about someone and he loses his shit, dumps me, and then of all the things he could do he goes to the one person whose life I feel personally responsible for ruining and he sleeps with her just to rub my nose in it! If you think I’m going to let that go any time soon you are sorely mistaken, Wanda I get, hell I deserve way worse than that. But Loki? All I ever did to him was tell the truth.” He and Nat stare each other down for a few minutes before she looks away. Tony isn’t dumb enough to assume he’s won.

“He slept with Wanda? And here I thought she had standards,” she smiles slightly and he barks out a humourless laugh. “I get your anger Tony, I do, but you being pissed off at him for pushing people away the second he starts to care is extremely ironic when you do the same thing. Hell, the two of you even do it for the same reason, neither one of you think you deserve happiness so you fight against it with everything you have. You’re practically the same damn person. It’s funny because Loki is so aware of people’s psychology and he uses it to destroy them, and you’re so painfully blind to everyone’s psychology but your own, and Loki’s. When are you going to get it Tony, Loki has no idea how to make you suffer because that means he had to confront some pretty uncomfortable things about himself.  And you? You aren’t punishing Loki, you’re punishing yourself and my god, you are _so_ good at it, far better than I would have ever guessed,” she shakes her head at him and walks away.

“Well that was extremely uncomfortable,” he says lightly to himself. He starts going through the feed Fitzsimmons is sending back, making maps of the hallways and flagging any discussions that could be important.

“You can’t hide behind your humour forever,” a voice with a thick Slovakian accent says from behind him. He sighs and wilts a little, the last thing he needed was Wanda’s shit but he stood there without saying anything anyways. He killed her family, frankly putting up with a little verbal abuse was the least he could do.

“You confused me when we first met, you felt guilty for what you’d done, I didn’t expect that. It pissed me off, you weren’t supposed to feel anything, you’re a monster. But I was wrong, you’re a pompous ass but you’re no monster, just a deluded man who convinced himself what he was doing was right. Everything you do is an attempt to atone for the wrongs you’ve committed, just like Natasha though she’d never admit it. That pissed me off even more, I don’t like grey areas,” she steps onto the podium and leans against his desk.

“For months I loathed you because you confused me, then your dreams started to leak into mine. I grew to pity you more than I hated you, now I find you extremely annoying. My point, I suppose, is that my confusion around you hasn’t faded. Your worst fear is that the whole world will end and it’ll be all your fault. At first I thought that you must be so incredibly narcissistic to believe that you had that kind of power but the more of your fears I saw the clearer things became. You aren’t self-absorbed, not the way I thought you were at least; you simply hate yourself so much that you believe that you and you alone hold the power to fuck things up so badly that the world will never recover. It’s pathetic. Loki is the same way, the two of you so wrapped up in your own self-loathing that you think the entire world will feel its effects. Neither one of you will ever be that important. I don’t know what gave you the impression I would ever go anywhere near Loki, or what he said to you, but when he came to me it was to remove every memory he had of you from his head, not sex. I do indeed have standards,” she finishes her long rant and oddly she doesn’t go anywhere.

He isn’t sure what the hell to make of Wanda’s words, mostly because it sounded like she still hated his guts. He figured that was fair though and started going through Fitzsimmons’ feed to gather intel. He’s skimming the feed at best when Fitz starts laughing hard enough to lean against the wall. Out of curiosity he rewinds the feed to what he figures is the start of the incident. The two of them are walking down a hallway filled with what he assumed were field agents, annoying ones at that. He’d heard all the annoying “hey little omega” comments before so he fasts forwards a bit. Jemma looked flustered, probably unused to the attention, probably was even before she got here and was sure to have gotten that kind of attention all the time. Some obnoxious person asked where she was going and it seemed Jemma had had enough and whirled around, “I’m going to die!” she shouts and Fitz starts laughing.

Jemma looks horrified and drags Fitz away from the confused field agents, “what the hell Jemma,” he asks between giggles.

Jemma still looks alarmed, “I was going to tell them I was on my way to the lab, but I was thinking I was going to die of shame and it came out I’m going to die, and now I am actually going to die of shame!” Tony and Wanda look at each other and start laughing, which was probably the only positive interaction they’ve ever had.

“Well that’s a relief, I was genuinely worried,” they whirl to find a large blonde agent behind them. For his part he did look like he was genuinely concerned though Tony was suspicious, though to be fair that was probably because everyone who spoke to him usually had hidden agendas.

Fitzsimmons exchanged a look, “nope, just a little flustered and on the way to the lab, not my death. Unless I die in the lab but that’s only about a twelve percent chance and that’s only if we use the equipment wrong, which we won’t and-”Fitz dragged her off before Jemma could finish that rant.

“Thanks for your concern,” Fitz yells over his shoulder and they duck into another room.

“Good god Jemma, get your shit together,” he tells her. Jemma looks so comically offended Tony and Wanda start laughing again


	2. S.H.I.E.L.D Falls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have chapter two too :)

Clint was making an effort to be as extremely annoying as he could possibly manage and if that included singing AC/DC as loudly and obnoxiously as he could that’s what he was doing. He was certain at least half of Coulson’s agents wanted him dead, particularly the stoic Asian lady that looked like she could eat hot coals without flinching. When Clint told her this her face hadn’t changed at all but he took that as a challenge. Coulson and the other agents on the other hand, they found that funny. “Do you think she could do it?” some guy named Mack asks.

The woman, Bobbi, grins, “hell yeah.” Melinda, Clint learned her name after Hunter, one of the other agents, had called her out for a break, rolls her eyes. Progress, that was good, Clint was making damn sure he cracked that woman before he was sprung.

“He’s purposely trying to irritate you,” Coulson warns her, “you should be careful though,” he tells Clint, “we call her the Calvary.”

Melinda whips around to glare at him, “ _don’t_ call me that,” she says through gritted teeth. Clint raises an eyebrow, so Coulson was willing to play Toy With Melinda. Nice, that would make things more interesting.

“Funny, a friend of mine has the same nickname. Twinsies!” he grins.

Melinda rolls her eyes again, “oh for god’s sake,” she says and leaves the room. Clint took that as a victory and whooped, planning on breaking the rest of them next.

“Huh, and we thought that was an original nickname,” Coulson sighs, “oh well.”

Clint snorts, “as if that’s Nat’s actual nickname.” He doesn’t realize what he said until it’s already out of his mouth. Well, shit.

“Nat? What’s that short for?” Bobbi says, looking at a grinning Coulson, “Natalie? Natalia? Close… Natasha?” she guesses. Shit shit shit, goddamnit Barton, get your shit together! He chides himself.

“Natasha, Natalia got a reaction too though, one or both is an alias so I’d run them both.” They all look triumphant. Clint was going to make sure he wiped those damn smirks off of their stupid faces.

“Don’t look so upset Clint, the fact that we’re playing a game too makes things more interesting,” Coulson says, smiling in a way that was strategically non-threatening. Damn, if he wasn’t locked in a cage with an unwanted bite on his shoulder from Coulson he would have thoroughly enjoyed the guy.

“So I’m curious, Bobbi and Hunter here seem to have some serious sexual tension, are you married? Divorced? Divorced!” he decides at Hunter’s pinched look. “What got in the way?” Clint asks, examining everyone in the room, “I’m going to go with trust issues, what super spy doesn’t have those,” he guesses based on Nat’s issues. His guess was right again if Hunter looking away was a tell, and it probably was. “You’re easy to read, my guess is that you aren’t actually a spy, so your what, hired help? I’m guessing that you have a skill set close to mine and that’s why you’re here. That and because Bobbi asked you nicely, you would have said no otherwise.” Hunter shot a rather betrayed look at Bobbi, who immediately went on the defensive.

“Why are you looking at me like that, I didn’t do anything!” she says, sounding as defensive as she looks.

“She tell you she’s up to something with Mack? The two of them were totally whispering about something earlier,” he says. Hunter looks immediately incensed and calls her out, Clint figured he’d do that. Mack, whom he didn’t have a very good grasp on, joins the fight in an attempt to calm Hunter down by telling him he and Bobbi weren’t involved in anything together. So he decided to play hero, interesting. Coulson, he noticed, ignored his squabbling agents in favour of watching Clint. Clint sat back and enjoyed the show because really, what the hell else was he supposed to do?

*

“Hey, do you think Fitzsimmons can manage to plug this into a computer without looking insanely suspicious? It’ll map all of S.H.E.I.L.D’s systems and send us copies,” Skye holds up a USB drive.

“Nice, I knew there was a reason I kept you around,” Tony jokes.

Skye looks mock offended, “well if that’s the _only_ reason I’ll take my business elsewhere! Seriously though, send Nat to give them this and tell them to plug it into a computer and I’ll do the rest. All they need to do it take it with them when they go.” Tony tells her to give the drive to Nat for delivery and she wanders off to do as he asked. He went back to combing through Fitzsimmons’ feed, gathering pictures of the field agents and other personal they came across to cross reference to gather info on S.H.E.I.L.D employees. Outside of that he hadn’t learned much outside of S.H.E.I.L.D’s large system of hallways he’d mapped out from Fitzsimmons running all over the place.  

He had, however, learned that one of the agents bit Clint. He would have considered it much more of an issue if the guy who bit him hadn’t gone to Fitzsimmons and asked if they could come up with a way to reverse the effects. Tony told them to wait two days before they gave over the solution they had developed years ago, just before he met them actually. The guy, Coulson, was someone Tony wanted to learn more about. He looked genuinely looked upset about what he’d done and in Tony’s experience that was either very good of very bad. He supposed time would tell, assuming it took them that long to spring Clint.

“Are you bored yet?” Bruce asks from behind him, “because I want to watch dystopian themed movies and I happen to know they’re your favourite,” he holds up a few movies, V for Vendetta and Mockingjay were the first couple he could see.

“You know what, I was gunna see if Fitzsimmons managed to embarrass themselves any more for entertainment but movies sound good. Has Nat left to deliver the USB drive? And what’s up with Loki, I haven’t heard anything about him since he left.” Bruce, he figured, would have at least some answers because Nat talked to him when she was out more than Tony. He didn’t mind though, Bruce made a great go-between because he had a tendency to go through possible ways to move forward before coming to Tony with what he thought was best, and even better, he was able to defend his opinion.

“Loki is already bored of Thor dotting on him, Nat is on her way to Fitzsimmons now to deliver the drive. How much mapping have you got done?” Bruce asks as they head to the T.V room.

“I’m not exactly sure, I’m guessing around a quarter of the building judging from what it looks like on the outside but that could be entirely inaccurate. For all I know there is several underground levels. Doesn’t matter though, Clint isn’t in that building, Fitzsimmons managed to figure that much out,” he flops himself on the couch and leaves sticking the movie in to Bruce.

“Still, maps could be useful later,” Bruce says as he glances back and forth between whichever two movies he wanted to watch first.

“Possibly,” Tony agrees easily. Bruce picks something and comes back over to the couch, dropping into his unofficial designated seat. Tony, when he built the place, had made it as something of a joke. Rhodey and Happy kept harping on him about a bug out location and finally he gave in, making a large space that was mostly underground. What was above ground wasn’t all that pretty and it mostly blended in with the sand, he regretted the desert location after Afghanistan but still, it was better than squatting in random buildings where Skye hacked nearby Wi-Fi signals. Plus he had a lab, and there were beds, he refused to give up luxury after living in a damn cave for three months. Also cheese burgers, he wasn’t giving those up either.

Thankfully he kept any existing records of this place to himself, with the exception of Rhodey, otherwise he would have either been found or Obi would have killed him off. As it was he nearly killed Pepper when he found out she knew he was alive. Pepper, aside from the knowledge that he wasn’t dead, didn’t know anything else and Obi had died suddenly of a heart attack induced by Natasha. That left a giant legal mess for Pepper but at least she was alive, and she didn’t know Tony paid Nat to kill someone. He figured he’d keep that to himself. Now he had a fair amount of these places in different areas of the world in case they needed to travel, or were found out, or someone managed to figure Pepper out.

Thankfully with the documents he sent over she had controlling interest in his company and he still had his cash flow, all he had to do was send Pepper prototypes of new things. Pep hadn’t been impressed, especially because she still had no idea where he was, but she relented because he was alive and safe and she didn’t have to pay a team of people to design things when he was still around. To cover his ass spending wise he and Skye set up a fake charity that Pepper donated regularly to, it looked good for her, and they didn’t have to worry about nosey people. Besides, even if they did they would still have one hell of a time finding anything useful and Pepper nearly died when Obi tried to steal the company, Tony didn’t figure she’d talk now. He wasn’t even sure if anyone would think to ask Rhodey, any trail left behind was only traceable to Pepper and Stark Industries.

“So if Clint isn’t in that particular facility where is he?” Bruce asks, apparently losing interest of the events in V for Vendetta.

“I have a couple of working theories but Simmons can’t flirt her way out of a paper bag and Fitz is even more embarrassing. If it was Nat we would have had the information and Clint back already. From what I gathered out of that conversation was that he wasn’t in any S.H.E.I.L.D facility, I think he’s on a boat somewhere, maybe a plane or something, where ever he is it isn’t easy to break out of. Or at least they’ve decided that a well-trained field agent would have a hard time breaking out. Clint, maybe not so much, the guy did grow up in a circus, he learned a few things about escape.” Frankly Tony didn’t think a circus would give him that much skills but apparently it had given him the basics, Nat may have fine-tuned a couple things when they teamed up.

“Huh. Don’t think Clint’s ever managed to escape from a plane before; he did manage to get off that ship that one time, in a row boat no less. I guess that’ll be a challenge,” Bruce says, probably doing calculations in his head.

“Let’s hope he raises hell while he’s at it,” Tony grins.

Bruce laughs, “oh he is, remember that one time he stole that guy’s pizza and the entire Russian mob came down on his ass? All for a circular piece of bread with tomato sauce and cheese,” he shakes his head. Tony hadn’t believed it when Clint had initially told the story, like why would the Russian mob be that invested in a pizza? But apparently it was a damn good pizza because it was true and that was the story of how they managed to take down that subsection of the Russian mob.

“Don’t tell Clint you think that about pizza, he nearly disowned Wanda after she called bagels bread circles,” Tony warns. Wanda had been bewildered as to why Clint had been so offended over a food item but eventually learned to accept that Clint had a special relationship with all things edible.

“Remember when he stole that entire hotdog stand and Nat had to kick like five guy’s asses when they chased after them?” Bruce had been some pissed over that, Nat had ended up with a nasty limp and a busted nose. She had insisted she was fine but that hadn’t settled Bruce whatsoever, Nat had a crazy high pain tolerance so fine to her was nearly dead to everyone else.

“Yeah, we still have the hotdog stand, I think Wanda is using it as a dresser because she refused to let me buy one for her,” Tony says. To be fair that was a pretty awesome dresser so he hadn’t really taken offence to that. He debated on stealing it but she was telekinetic and telepathic plus she hated his guts, it seemed like a rather dumb idea to try and fuck with her. Contrary to popular belief he did have some survival instinct.

*

Phil Coulson has been in some very sticky situations, working with S.H.E.I.L.D that was par for the course most days. They were handed cases that no one else could figure out, were above everyone else’s expertise, or above everyone else’s clearance level. Out of all the missions he’d been on he hadn’t come across anyone quite like Clint. He was obviously highly trained but there was no record of him anywhere, nothing in relation to his Nat either. He seemed to get a rise out of fucking with people and he had at least some abilities to keep Phil out of his head because most of the time all he got was vague feelings unless Clint specifically sent thoughts and images his way. If it wasn’t for their situation he would have thoroughly enjoyed Clint, it was rare to come across an omega that was so able to resist an alpha. It didn’t help that they were socialized that they were to be subservient and quite, always giving their alpha whatever they wanted. Alphas, in contrast, were socialized to basically treat omegas like children. How that was meant to encourage a healthy relationship he had no idea, he wanted a partner, not a child. Well, he did want kids, but he didn’t want his kid to be his partner. Though alphas were treated as children too, when they were aggressive and threw temper tantrums it was okay, but when an omega did that they were mentally unstable. It annoyed him.

Clint was basically the antithesis to all omega stereotypes and it seemed to either confuse people or gain their respect. Hunter, for example, was absolutely enthused with Clint, as was Bobbi, but quite a few of the other agents thought his getting stuck with someone as autonomous as Clint was a bad thing. It didn’t take long for him to get tired of this, “wow, Clint can act like his own person rather than falling under the control of my every word, what a horrible thing!” he says sarcastically when someone laughs at what a “handful” Clint was. Across his cell Clint snickers. “For god’s sakes people, why the hell do you people think having the ability to resist the Alpha’s Command is basically on par with boiling puppies? Honestly you have to be a duchebag of epic Disney villain proportions to think a person having bodily autonomy is a bad thing,” the last bit certainly wasn’t his own thought, at least not worded that way.

Clint laughs, clearly surprised that he had spoken the words Clint thought to him. “Look at this shit, now he’s controlling you!” the irritated agent says.

He rolls his eyes, “if it’s a bad thing to be controlled by an omega then why is it okay to control one? If you don’t want to be under someone’s control you have no business putting someone under your control. That doesn’t make sense and it creates an imbalance in the relationship, you’re supposed to be equal to your partner, not domineering and subservient.” He can feel Clint agreeing strongly through the bond though he was also suspicious. He couldn’t blame Clint, he did bite the guy. To be fair though he had done so because he wasn’t above fighting dirty and Clint was about to escape. He didn’t realize Clint was an omega until too late and now he was under orders to keep that quiet. Fury seemed to think the discrepancy between Phil’s actions and Phil’s words would confuse Clint enough to slip up and talk. Phil wasn’t so sure; he hadn’t produced anything useful so far even when he did slip up.

Eventually the agent gave up, unable to hold his opinions in the face of basic logic, and he wanders off to do whatever. Clint gets up shortly after and starts wandering around his cell some; shockingly he hadn’t gone crazy being stuck in there. Most people would get stir crazy fast but Clint kept his cool, like this was a regular thin for him, which, for all he knew it was. “If you think all this why bite me? That doesn’t add up,” Clint points out. He’s not wrong, from Clint’s perspective he had proven himself quite the hypocrite considering his views and then turning around and basically stripping Clint of his bodily autonomy by biting him then, and he wasn’t exactly proud of this, trying to use the Alpha’s Command on him to try and get him to calm down. In his slight defense Clint had been freaking out, understandably so, and he had been worried he’d accidentally hurt himself or someone else but he could see the stupidity in that decision now.

Thankfully he doesn’t have to think of a way to cover his ass because Bobbi thinks something up for him, “yeah but you don’t smell like an omega. You don’t smell like anything actually, it’s really weird,” she says, tilting her head and squinting her eyes at him as if she could figure him out by staring hard enough at him.

Clint sighs, “Right, I forgot about that pesky detail,” he mumbles. He can feel that there’s more to the story but Clint’s thoughts, emotions, and words gave nothing away. “So when am I getting out of here?” he asks casually, raising an eyebrow.

“Not anytime soon,” Melinda says, appearing by the door looking more pissed off than usual, “have you guys noticed anything… odd going on today?” she asks.

“Other than the annoying amount of people who think omegas are useless, no,” Hunter says, looking up from his phone. He was pretty sure that he was playing Bejeweled but Clint wasn’t exactly a threat behind the glass so it wasn’t like it mattered, plus Lance had incredible reflexes so if something were to happen he’d be fine.

Melinda’s brows draw together, “I don’t know what it is but something feels… wrong somehow,” she says. He probably would have asked her what she meant by that but that’s when the alarm goes off.

*

Tony and Bruce were in the middle of an engaging discussion about anarchy and whether or not it was a viable system, which Bruce said it was not, but Tony pointed out that state control was relatively new and for most of human history people _were_ anarchists, when the alarm goes off. They all but fling themselves out the door and back to the centre of the lair where all the equipment was, nearly tripping over each other on the way. “Could this be a fluke?”  Bruce asks as they skid into the room, finding Wanda and Skye already there and looking to him for direction.

“No, there’s no way Fitzsimmons could have managed to trip this alarm by accident,” he says, turing their feed on to find nothing but fire on Fitz’s end but Jemma was still moving, probably having managed to keep her camera glasses on. Behind him Skye swear and Wanda starts to pace. Bruce is deceptively still and Tony really _really_ hopes he manages to keep it together and not hulk out in there because he did not want to rebuild.

“What the fuck is going on?” he asks, hoping the either Fitz or Simmons still had their ear piece in. Fitz’ thankfully seems to have heard him because Fitz’s screen goes from streaming through his glasses to his phone, which was a relief to know he wasn’t dead or worse.

“We have no idea,” he yells over the sound of people fighting, “we were in the lab and then,” his camera scans the area around him, which was covered in dead people, blood, and fire, “this happened. It looks like S.H.I.E.L.D has fallen in on itself, everyone is fighting each other!” he yells and ducks as something off screen hits the wall behind where Fitz’s head just was.

There’s some more confusion as Fitz runs off somewhere, doing a lot of yelling and swearing when he could remember which swear word he wanted to use before he ducks into a room. Jemma comes into the screens view, “we need to get the hell out of here, only we’ve been chased into an area we don’t know,” she says, “do you have anything useful that will get us out?” she asks, looking like she was only just holding it together.

Skye jumps up onto the podium, “did you get that USB plugged into a computer?” she asks.

Jemma looks confused as to why that would be relevant, “yes,” Fitz answers.

Skye nods, “okay good, I can access their blue prints,” she says, typing furiously, “and then hopefully we can… can… guys,” she says slowly, “I think you might be fucked.” Tony’s screen splits off as Skye’s work pops onto the screen, only instead of the eagle that was S.H.I.E.L.D’s symbol it’s HYDRA’s senseless octopus thing. It wasn’t even a fucking HYRDA and that pissed Tony off. Hydra’s had the ability to regrow heads, not multiple legs, what the fuck even was that thing? Stupid, that’s what it was, but he returns his attention to the task at hand. It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s going on after that.

“What the hell do you mean we're being invaded by HYDRA?” Jemma yells.

“No,” Skye says, “you aren’t being invaded by HYDRA, S.H.I.E.L.D _is_ HYDRA,” she says, giving her screens a panicky look as she tried to figure out some method of escape.

“Where is Natasha?” Bruce asks quietly, looking like he was having a hard time keeping calm, which, he understood.

Jemma and Fitz shake their heads, “no idea,” they say, “she left hours ago.”

“She’s probably long gone then, off to go find Loki,” Tony says to Bruce in a sad attempt at calming him down.

“Then that means she’s in some fight where ever Loki is,” Wanda says, “Thor is S.H.I.E.L.D too, despite what Loki says he loves his brother and he’d go after him if he knew something went wrong and with Loki’s history the chances of him knowing about this are good, and Natasha wouldn’t just let him die,” she says, ruining any attempt at calming Bruce.

“I have to go,” he says quickly and all but runs from the room.

“Ha!” Skye says, presumably finding something, just as the door to the room Fitzsimmons was in bursts open, “shit.”

Fitzsimmons gives them a panicky look and Tony shuts the projector down and throws up the holograms instead, they were easier for him to navigate, “I’m assuming you two have weapons of some sort?” he asks, going over the blue prints Skye had found quickly, finding a way out for them in seconds. He had always been really good at mazes.

“We made a few homemade bombs using Christmas decorations,” Fitz whispers.

“Nice,” he says, “you’re going to need to blow up whoever just got into that room and Fitz, let’s try to avoid more brain damage, yeah?” he says. His trip to the bottom of the ocean had already done its damage and Tony didn’t really want to have to deal with that again, mostly because his inability to access his own brain had taken a huge toll on Fitz’s self-esteem and he didn’t want a repeat incident to happen and make his self-image worse.

He expects some sort of cohesive action and realizes right away he expected too much. They stand up in sync, stepping on each other in the process, giving their position away immediately when they started complaining at each other. “Well,” Wanda says, “it was nice knowing them,” she says and leaves the room too quickly to be normal. She was probably trying to avoid all stimuli that reminded her of the time Tony blew up her fucking family and of Pietro’s death. He didn’t blame her.

Fitzsimmons lets out a loud shriek when the two agents point their guns at them and hey, Tony knew that blonde guy, he was the one who had asked about Jemma the day before.  “Don’t gun me!” Fitz yells, throwing his hands up.

“Shoot, Fitz, you don’t want them to shoot you,” Jemma says gently.

“Who cares?” Fitz shrieks back, “Wait, we have bombs, if we go down so do you!” he yells at the agents.

Blondie looks confused, “wait, you guys are from the science division, how did you get all the way over here?” he asks, lowering his weapon. The brunette behind him seemed to have fewer reservations about shooting Fitzsimmons because his gun remains pointed at them.

“Well the people with guns and other weapons were a little bit in our way,” Jemma says with a shocking amount of sarcasm.

“No need to be sarcastic,” Blondie says, taking a step forward, “are you okay?” he asks.

“Oh hell no,” Fitz says, producing a red Christmas ball, “I am not afraid to throw this at you,” he says, “we’ll be fine at this distance,” he throws in, probably so Blondie doesn’t think it’s a bluff because they wouldn’t blow themselves up.

Blondie responds by telling them he’s going to drop the gun, which he does, and takes another step forward. “ _Steve_ ,” the brunette hisses at Blondie, giving him a look of disbelief.

“Bucky they’re scared, they aren’t going to-” his words are cut off by Fitz’s battle cry as he throws the red ball. The brunette, Bucky, dives on the blonde and the two fall behind a lab table, barely managing to miss the blast radius of the Christmas ball. In their defence Fitz had fucking terrible aim and probably wouldn’t have hit them anyways.

“Where do we go!” Jemma yells, her head turning back and forth fast enough to make Tony dizzy.

“To the left,” he instructs, “go out that door and run down the hallway and take your first right.” They run but the damn agents take off after them.

“You shouldn’t have underestimated them!” Bucky yells, “Where the hell are you two going!” he yells after Fitzsimmons. Point to him for being smart enough to recognize a threat when he saw one.

“They were scared, I didn’t think-” Blondie starts but the other guy cuts him off.

“Damn right you didn’t think!” Bucky yells back.

“Wait, you two duck!” Steve yells and Fitzsimmons hits the ground fast enough that Tony is suspicious. He and Skye exchange a glance and look back to the screen to find that at least Blondie was saving Fitzsimmons’ asses from random agents with guns.

“Did he just use the Alpha’s Command on them?” Skye asks.

Tony sighs, “I’m about ninety percent sure, yeah. Fitsimmons I hope you heard that, every troll has their use, run before he forces you to stick around,” he says as calmly as possible. No need to make Fitsimmons panic because he’s panicking. He really _really_ hated it when alphas did that, just used Commands like they had a right to. He absolutely loathed the idea of someone being without their bodily autonomy because someone else willed it. That had a lot to do with his own past, his not so fun visit to Afghanistan, Obi, his father. All of them had made an attempt to control him and failed, biology be damned, he was no one’s puppet.

Thankfully Fitzsimmons runs like hell, turning the corner and barely missing the shots from the other agents. Tony gives them a few more instructions, leading them slowly to an exit of the side of the building close to the parking lot. They could get themselves out from there, they were tech geniuses, but getting there was proving to be a problem.

They were almost out when they ran into Blondie and co again, this time they were significantly more bloody and beaten up. “Hey, wait!” blondie, Steve, yells and Fitzsimmons stops mid step. Tony lets out a very creative sting of expletives that makes Skye raise her eyebrows.

“If you could stop doing that we would greatly appreciate it,” Fitz snaps, under his own free will having complied with the Order.

“Do what?” Blondie asks and Tony’s eyes practically bug out of his head. _As if he didn’t know_. No one was that fucking stupid.

“Using Commands on them, Steve,” Bucky says, “you should probably just let me do the talking. What the hell is going on?” he asks them.

Fitzsimmons exchanges a look, “we’re not telling you,” Fitz says, accurately guessing that he probably shouldn’t declare a side assuming the agents in front of them weren’t on that side.

“Why the hell not?” Steve snaps.

“Because we don’t know if you’re HYDRA!” they blurt in sync, making frustrated noises at being compelled to do so. Tony’s jaw clenches and he can see Skye giving him the side eye but he’s fine, really. Totally fine.  

“Shut up damn it,” Bucky tells him, “you aren’t exactly doing anything to gain their trust.”

“No offense but I don’t see why we need it,” Steve says and Tony _really_ wished he was there to kill that fucker.

“Because they know more than we do, and their obviously capable of escape. We kind of need their skill set and knowledge at the moment, Steve,” he says, giving Steve an annoyed look.

Fitzsimmons glances at each other again, “Tony where are we going?” they ask.

“There should be a door out right in front of you,” he says. They open the door, prepared to flee out of it, but the fucking thing was on the second floor and leads to know where for some inexplicable reason.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” all three of them snap in sync. Skye lets out a hysterical laugh and shakes her head, rubbing her temples and quickly returning to panic.

“Jump?” they ask each other, “jump,” they decide and before Tony can tell them that’s a bad idea they’re in the air and free falling. Thankfully there was a dumpster beneath them and they seemed to have taken a page from Clint’s book.

*

Clint was so fucking pissed, first he had all this drama with S.H.I.E.L.D, then fucking S.H.I.E.L.D ends up being HYDRA and then one of those HYDRA fucks tried to drop his damn cell from what he found out was a god damn helicarrier. Coulson saves his ass just in time though, shooting the guy who was about to drop him right between the eyes and letting him the hell out. He ends of dropping the cell after that, apparently it was better to assume that he was dead, and gives Clint his arrows. God he loves arrows, even better when they were buried in HYDRA scum.

To say Coulson was impressed was an understatement; he managed to take out a good forty agents on his own either with his bow or his skill. He seemed to realize Clint was not a good person to mess with, which was smart because the only one on his team with better fighting skills than him was Natasha and she had taught him. She probably could have had this whole thing taken over and landed by now.

They end up running into Bobbi, who was a force of her own, yikes, and they finally figure out what the hell was happening. “No, HYRDA hasn’t somehow invaded S.H.I.E.L.D from the air,” Bobbi says, “S.H.I.E.L.D _is_ HYRDA. We’re fucked, Coulson.”

Clint snorts, “the fuck we are, we’re taking over this flying fuck and getting the hell out of here,” he says and marches off with purpose. 


	3. Dire Miscalculations

Tony had a lot of bad habits; bad habit number one was trying to solve his problems via sex. It used to be sex and alcohol but being stuck underground, literally, with a small group of people made drinking significantly less fun. Sex, given that people rarely recognized him or only thought he looked like himself, was a much easier and more fun way to spend his nights and for a little while he could forget about all the shit that just happened and relax some. The only problem he had to deal with was the annoying tendency for alphas to try and get him to submit to them, which, no. His entire life _someone_ had been trying to control him via Commands and after the disaster that was Afghanistan he had developed something of a phobic reaction to it. He strongly disliked the idea that instead of treating him like a human being people thought it was okay to try and make him into their marionette with little to no regard to his own feelings on the subject. They could have just _asked_ and he’d probably be happy to go along with their plans but no, instead people decided they’d rather strip him of his basic human rights in order to _get laid_. It took just about everything he had to no try and rip those people’s throats out with his teeth.

The only alphas he had had good experiences with consistently were Rhodey and Pepper, neither ever tried to Command him to do anything, even when it would make their lives easier. They treated him like an equal and he paid them the same respect, much to everyone’s surprise. He was well known for being an absolute shameless asshole, and both Pepper and Rhodey were well known for not putting up with anyone’s shit. People seemed to expect them to hate each other but the only reason they acted the way they did was because they were consistently treated like shit for things they couldn’t help. Tony was an omega, Pepper a woman, and Rhodey was a black man. None of them took too kindly for being seen as only those things and when they had all come across each other they had gotten along great. Rhodey was Tony’s oldest and arguably only friend, though he did count Pepper, but she was also paid to stick around. He did trust her implicitly though and that was not something he handed out lightly, there were things he trusted Pepper with that he didn’t even trust Rhodey with, like his company. In Rhodey’s defence that was because he knew nothing about business whereas Pepper was more capable than him and it was his business.

He sat on a stool on the far end of the bar, way out of the way from where he usually sat, but he really couldn’t stand being the centre of attention anymore. It was difficult to go from a space where there was mutual respect, community, and team work to an area where he was so blatantly subhuman. He had no idea how people who were significantly less privileged than him handled it. Even Loki, whom he hated with a passion at the moment, treated him with more respect than half the patrons here and the same was true in the reverse and they spent half their time trying to verbally murder each other. “You’re terrible at conspicuous, even when you aren’t trying to grab the attention of everyone in the room you still draw their attention.” He turns to find Loki standing to his left with a split lip and a gash across his nose. There was probably more damage but it looked like he had done a good job covering the bruises with makeup.

“Well you’re not dead, that makes at least one of us,” he mumbles. He could have done without Loki but he doesn’t mention that because there was no need for needless cruelty, at least at the moment.

Loki nods, “two of us actually, Nat is with us. By ‘us’ I mean I couldn’t manage to shake my pesky bother,” he says even though they both know he probably didn’t try that hard.

Tony shrugs, he’s met Thor a few times and aside from being annoyingly attentive to Loki he didn’t seem like an awful person. Besides, they had a number of precautions in place in case they did end up in bad company so if worst came to worst they were covered. “Let’s go then,” he says and downs the rest of his drink. He had better things to do that get hit on by gross people.

Loki remains suspiciously quiet on the way back to the parking lot, which probably didn’t bode well but he ignores it for now. “By the way we’re in your car, we stole one to get this far,” Loki tells him as they come up the vehicle with two extra people in it. He sighs but accepts it because he’s the one driving, which was all he really needed out of the situation.

They get in and Tony looks in the rear view mirror to find Natasha giving him an irritated look, “what happened?” they ask in sync. They both remain silent so Tony decides to go first, “no sign of Clint, Fitzsimmons escaped and I expect they are capable enough to get back here. I have no idea what exactly prompted the takeover but it appears that S.H.I.E.L.D and HYDRA are one in the same and HYDRA decided yesterday was a good over throw day.”

Natasha nods but doesn’t say anything right away, which is bad, “so you haven’t heard anything at all from Clint?” she asks. The two were best friends and the two that started their ragtag group of freaks, if he lost Clint he was in for a world of hell.

“So far? Nothing, but this is Clint, he’s been in some pretty insane positions and made it out the other side,” he says because it’s true. He was one of the only people there without a super power of some sort and unlike Tony he wasn’t a genius who could make up for it with a super suit, or Loki, who was so good at exploiting people’s psychological weakness he didn’t need an actual super power to bring people to their knees. Clint was good enough that he didn’t need Nat’s somewhat enhanced abilities, Wanda’s mental manipulation, Skye’s ability to manipulate matter, Bruce’s giant green rage monster form, or Fitzsimmons’ insane amount of brain power.

Natasha gives him a hard look in the rear view mirror but Tony had actual faith that Clint would make it out just fine. The guy was freakishly resilient. “So what happened on your end?” he asks.

Natasha shrugs, “pretty much what you just described. Thor went to work, shit hit the fan, Loki caught wind of it and took off, I took off after him because someone needed to make sure he didn’t die and when we got there S.H.I.E.L.D was fighting itself. Guess we know why now,” she says.

Thor frowns, “where are you getting this information?” he asks.

Loki gives Nata look, “sorry Thor,” he says without sounding very remorseful at all. Thor’s eyebrows draw together just as Nat punches him, effectively knocking him out.

*

Clint was more than a little annoyed when Bobbi and Coulson managed to fuck him over after they landed that stupid helicarrier. Had he been paying the proper amount of attention to them he probably could have avoided being knocked out but he was sloppy and now he was sitting on Coulson’s couch marveling at the sheer amount of S.H.I.E.L.D shit he owned. Bobbi had run off to go find Hunter a few hours ago so at least that left him with only Coulson to escape from and the guy was an absolute neat freak. It shouldn’t be hard to irritate him into leaving him alone long enough for him to shimmy out a window or something. “The amount of shit you have with ‘S.H.I.E.L.D’ written somewhere on it is troubling,” he says and picks up a S.H.I.E.L.D mug off the coffee table and walking away with it, setting it down on the T.V stand.

Predictably Coulson goes over to retrieve the mug as soon as Clint walks away from it, bringing it to the attached kitchen area. He lived in a nice apartment at least, open concept, that was going to make escape a pain in the ass. “I like my job,” he says in his defense.

Clint snorts and picks up a S.H.I.E.L.D towel that seemed to be the only thing out of place in the entire apartment, “you wash your ass with S.H.I.E.L.D, that is more than a job, it’s an obsession,” he says. There were various other S.H.I.E.L.D things, sweaters, shirts, a wallet, several mugs, _shoes_ , the bag he was using to pack his things, _boxers_ for gods sakes.

“It is not,” Coulson protests, trying to shove a S.H.I.E.L.D hat into his bag before Clint sees it an fails miserably.

“Sure,” he says cheerily and walks off to explore the rest of the apartment. Sound traveled well, Coulson probably thought he could keep track of him easily that way. He was soon to be mistaken but Clint forgave him for the oversight.

The rest of the apartment was as meticulous as the living and kitchen area; the bedroom didn’t even look like it was used at all. The only other room in the house was dedicated solely to Captain America stuff. Comics, bobble heads, posters, shields, action figures, if it was collectable it there was at least one of them in that room. He makes sure to make plenty of noise shuffling things around, Coulson shows up within seconds to shoo him out. “Leave my pop vinyls alone,” he says, snatching a Captain America bobble head out of his hand, “those are rare,” he mumbles, rearranging the figures.

Clint snorts and pokes on in the head, “dust collectors,” he says flippantly, “absolutely useless.”

Coulson fixes the figure he touched, “it is not a dust collector, it’s a collectable!” he says, trying to insert himself between Clint and the precious pop vinyl figures without much success.

“Dust collector,” Clint says and flicks the head of one of the pop vinyl Captain Americas, knocking it over.

“Out, out you go, you can wait for me in the hallway!” Coulson says, physically grabbing Clint and pushing him out of the room. In his defense he was gentle about it rather than straight up shoving him out. Clint would have punched him in the face if the situation was reversed and Coulson was fucking with his archery equipment, he had more patience than Clint had thought.

Not that it mattered. Clint goes willingly and as soon as Coulson shuts the door to his apartment he walks off, happy that Coulson’s dumb ass willingly let him go. He should have known that would last like two seconds but he still doesn’t expect to be tackled from behind less than twelve seconds later, “was that necessary?” he mumbles under Coulson’s weight, “why even bother to keep me around?”

“First off yes, that was necessary, and I keep you around because HYDRA has taken over S.H.I.E.L.D and that gives them a lot of resources, being linked to me paints a target on your back. I don’t want you to die because of me,” he says. As far as reasons go that wasn’t horrible, but it was still stupid.

“I can take care of myself, thank you,” he mumbles and lets Coulson pull him up.

“You have no idea what HYDRA is capable of,” Coulson says, looking genuinely worried for him.

Clint raises an eyebrow, “and you do? Last I checked you dedicated your life to working for them, and just so you know I know exactly what HYDRA is capable of.” Coulson at least has the sense to look ashamed.

*

Fitz _insisted_ on getting food even though they didn’t actually need it. But no, Fitz was horribly cranky when hungry and neither one of them wanted to deal with his irritation at the moment. They get back into the car to find the two agents they thought they had ditched back at the S.H.I.E.L.D facility in it, “hey,” the blonde one says like this was a regular thing.

Fitz rolls his eyes, “what do you two want?” he snaps, irritated from hunger.

“Fitz!” Jemma scolds, she wasn’t going to get killed by a couple of possibly HYDRA agents because Fitz was hungry.

“What?” he asks, “What are they going to do, shoot us in the middle of a parking lot?”

“Yes, probably and now we’re going to get killed because you haven’t eaten a damn granola bar,” she hisses. She was going to kick his ass in heaven for this.

“Uhh, we aren’t going to kill you, I mean if we were we wouldn’t have bothered with being seen,” the brunette says, “we are curious as to who you’re working for though, you were taking orders from someone when you escaped and we’re curious as to who. It isn’t like infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D is easy, though you two seemed to manage just fine.”

Jemma and Fitz exchange a glance, “how do you know we infiltrated anything? For all you know we’re HYDRA agents that’ve been purposefully tracking you,” Jemma says, raising an eyebrow.

The brunette snorts, “I know HYDRA, you aren’t them,” he says, his jaw clenching. Blondie gives him a worried glance but quickly turns his attention back to Fitz.

“Obviously not considering you’ve been working for them without knowing,” she says logically. This earns her some very dirty looks, particularly from the brunette though the blonde was only slightly less terrifying.

“Jemma!” Fitz scolds, giving her the same look she had given him only a few minutes before.

“What? It’s true, that’s not my fault,” she says, shrugging. “So why are you two here? There’s no real reason for you to care about who we work for, or what we we’re doing in S.H.I.E.L.D or HYDRA.” Her thought process was logical, as it usually was, and they didn’t seem to have much interest in harming either her of Fitz, they had plenty of opportunity and hadn’t followed through on it and they hadn’t.

The blonde sighs, “we literally just had our worlds turned upside down, you’re something to focus on,” he says.

The brunette gives him a look, “Steve!” he hisses.

The blonde, Steve, shrugs, “what are they going to do with that information? Nothing useful,” he points out.

She exchanges another look with Fitz; “well then now that we have that settled do you two want water?” she asks and finds a couple of water bottles. They should have known something was wrong before they took the drinks, she just bought drinks and she wouldn’t need to do that if she already had some in the car, but as always they were underestimated for being small jumpy omegas. Idiots.

“How much time do you think we have until they come to?” Fitz asks, glancing at the two alphas that were now half asleep in the back seat.

“We should make it back before they wake up if we speed,” she says lightly, pulling her seatbelt across her chest, “put your seat belt on Fitz, if we get in an accident you can’t handle any more brain damage, you’ve only just started to mostly get your brain function back,” she says, scolding him lightly.

*

Clint has been in some sticky situations and on a scale of one to ten this wasn’t all that bad. Coulson was like a box full of violent kittens, sure they bit and scratched, but they were mostly harmless and also cute. Not that Coulson was cute… well okay he was, but Clint wasn’t looking. When he had started giving Coulson directions he hadn’t expected him to listen, let alone continue following his instructions for over an hour. He took it though, adjusting to the new situation quickly and making a plan for incapacitating Coulson so he could get back to Tony’s lair without having to worry about him causing trouble for everyone.

Coulson was intelligent, a good agent, and he was highly trained so naturally knocking him out would be incredibly easy. Alphas were easy and they always fell for the same shit no matter how many times Clint pulled the same tricks. They might claim it was some sort of biological reaction to help an omega in need but Clint saw through that crap, what it was was underestimating omegas because they were supposedly naturally weak, demure, and submissive. Being underestimated was especially true for women, the amount of times Wanda and Nat just _walked_ into random government buildings, or pulled the ‘hurt omega’ act and got carried in was insane. It was hard to believe people were that stupid but the people they tended to deal with typically viewed omegas in a particularly bad light, more so if they fell into other minorities. He guessed in a lot of ways it made their jobs easier in the long run.

With Coulson he started out small, complaining about a head ache, rubbing his temples, pretending like he was pretending that he wasn’t in pain. He spread it out over about an hour or so before he made his symptoms worse, trying to curl up in his seat and leaning his head against the window. Coulson eventually frowns, “are you okay?” he asks, reaching over to try and feel Clint’s forehead.

Clint smacks his hand away, “don’t touch me,” he snaps, curling up tighter in his seat.

Coulson gives him another look but leaves him be for another few minutes before asking again if he was okay. Clint gives him a snappy and sarcastic response and Coulson slows down the car, presumably to get a closer look at Clint. He found that stupid considering Clint had already told him to fuck off, it wasn’t like Coulson could do much when he didn’t want help.

But he pulls over anyways, which was exactly what Clint wanted, and gets out to go check on him. Clint had already managed to wiggle out of his seatbelt by the time Coulson opened the door. “Clint,” he says softly, reaching out to him, “are you-” his words are cut off by Clint’s fist to his face. Coulson stumbles back, surprised, and Clint is already on him, sending him head first into the side of the car. He almost feels bad, Coulson wasn’t a bad person, not really, but he had his suspicions and besides, Tony’s lair was super-secret. Coulson couldn’t know where it was.

*

Loki looks from Tony to the cell and raises an eyebrow at the three alphas that had, for now, been tossed in a cell Bruce had made to be Hulk proof so they certainly couldn’t escape it. They all blink awake at roughly the same time looking confused in Coulson and the blonde’s case, but the brunette looked pissed. “What the fuck?” he snaps, glaring at everything in his immediate field of vision. It was almost funny but Tony was most interested in the guy’s arm, it was impressive and when he looked a little less murderous Tony was so checking it out.

Clint looked pleased when Coulson manages to find him, blinking a few times in confusion, “what the hell, Clint?” he asks.

Clint grins, “nice role reversal, eh?” he says, entirely way too satisfied with the situation.

“What is this?” blondie asks, looking like a confused ball of fluff. He would have been cute if Tony didn’t hate the guy so much.

“This,” Loki says, “is what happens when you’re stupid enough to underestimate people. Don’t worry, we don’t want you dead. For now.” Loki walks off in a subtle air of dramatics because he is an absolute drama queen but he refused to admit it.

The brunette looks around and settles his gaze on Tony, “you,” he says, “have some fucking explaining to do, and not just about where you’ve been for the last two years.”

Tony smiles, “clever one you are, I’ll explain when I feel like it,” he says and walks away, Clint following behind. There was no way he was giving them what they wanted right away, all in due time, also Wanda had to determine whether or not they were threats.                                                


	4. Freedom Fight

Wanda frowns at him, “why are you standing on your desk?” she asks, tilting her head in confusion. She must be back from eavesdropping on the alphas and from her not overly sour expression they must have checked out.

“I like to be tall,” he says, full well knowing she probably won’t get the reference, “also I’m trying to fix JARVIS,” he points to the control panel above my head.

“What’s wrong with JARVIS?” she asks, sounding surprisingly concerned about the computer program, they’ve bonded over the last year she’s been here.

“I seem to do quite well for a stretch and then at the end of the sentence I say the wrong cranberry,” JARVIS tells her, “it’s totally fine.” He smiles because he made a system smart enough to know when humans need consoling, even if it was a piss poor attempt at it. He’s pretty sure it’s a crossed wire or two and even if it isn’t he’s a tech genius, JARVIS would be fine.

“He will be, right? Fine, I mean,” Wanda clarifies.

“Yeah, sure. Just a couple of wires that got tangled, no big deal,” he says casually. He feels energy pull at his feet and he quickly manages to right himself before he toppled over, “hey, _hey_ , I don’t care if you fuck with me but leave my tech out of it, it isn’t my computer’s fault I’m an asshole,” he says, leaning down to pat the computer he would have crushed with his body weight if Wanda had actually knocked him over.

Wanda rolls her eyes, “than stop being a flippant douche and fix JARVIS,” she snaps, “the blonde alphas check out, but I know the third. We’ve met,” she says and he recognized that look, he had his own demons to contend with, it didn’t take long for him to learn to recognize it in others.

“Okay, what exactly does that mean?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. That could mean a million and one things but he was fairly certain he knew what she was getting at.

“I mean at some point he worked for HYDRA, sort of, he doesn’t seem to be overly aware of his time there and he didn’t remember me at all. He has a mind block, something similar to what Natasha has, so does Clint’s blonde, but that one is… different, more man made,” she says, wandering a little closer. Tony tracked her movements even if he knew it was useless, she was arguably the most dangerous of them though an argument could be made for Bruce, who was near indestructible. Bruce was passive though, and even hulked out he had some capacity for empathy, there was that one time he almost died but Bruce caught him and roared at him, effectively scaring him back to life. That was a fun story. Wanda though, when she chose not to pity she was merciless and he’d really rather not be on the receiving end of her damage. Not that she wouldn’t have good reason, he’d deserve whatever he got, but that didn’t mean he wanted to die exactly.

“What do you mean man made? And do you think he’s dangerous?” he asks, still watching Wanda skeptically.

“I mean there is a difference between the mind making a natural block to protect itself from harm and someone putting a mental block in place. Natasha and the brunette seemed to have blocked things out, which is for the best in both their cases, but there’s more to the story with Clint’s alpha. And is the brunette dangerous? Yes, extremely, arguably more dangerous that Nat and we both know she’s good enough to become a literal legend. This one too, most people don’t even know he exists but he was called the Winter Soldier, we met briefly in our time in HYDRA. He is extremely capable but he was brainwashed extensively, like Nat was, I don’t think he’ll be a threat to us and if he is, well, it would take me a few seconds to reactivate HYDRA’s brainwashing. He’d be useless,” she says somewhat harshly.

Tony frowns, “you’d do that?” he asks, shocked that she’d be willing to go that far. His eyebrows draw together, “we’re all here because we were sick of being controlled or having people attempt to control us, you can’t just strip someone of their personhood like that, especially when that’s what we’ve been trying to escape.” He shakes his head at her, confused as to why she would do such a thing, “just throw him into a wall if he’s a problem,” he says, pointing out the much more obvious solution here.

Wanda looks him up and down, which was disconcerting considering he was several feet taller than her at the moment, “I didn’t think you would be so opposed to that, I suppose your hypocrisy does have its limits,” she says and leaves before he can say much of anything to that. He thinks that might have been a compliment but it was so back handed he wasn’t sure it actually existed.

“To be fair, sir, I don’t believe she was serious about reactivating HYDRA’s mind control in your current captive, I do believe that was a testicle,” JARVIS says, deadpan and unaware of the screw up.

Tony sighs, “Well, on the plus side that at least had the word you were looking for in it, clearly I’m closer to finding the problem,” he says and returns his attentions to JARVIS’ wires.

*

Clint wasn’t a total asshole, okay he totally was, but Coulson was fairly good to him so he figured he’d return the favor. “Are we going to get let out of here?” Coulson asks when he returns to the cell, looking irritated. Thor had been rather upset with the arrangement too until Loki pointed out that any one of them could be HYDRA and even if they weren’t it wasn’t like alphas had a shining reputation for not killing the shit out of people that wronged them in some way, it was for protection. Thor still mumbled a bit but accepted that HYDRA agents would need to be found out for the safety of the general public let alone the people in the lair.

“Wanda cleared you all so yeah, probably, Tony’s just doing something else at the moment,” he says and takes a long drink of his milkshake. He missed milkshakes.

Blondie, Steve, frowns, “who’s Wanda and how did she clear us when we don’t even know who she is?” he asks. At least it was a valid question.

“Wanda’s a telepath and she dug through your minds,” he says bluntly. As expected none of them were pleased, all protesting vehemently against such treatment.

“Don’t look at us like that,” Coulson says when Clint gives them a look, “you wouldn’t want someone digging around through your head, you didn’t want me in there!” he protests.

Clint rolls his eyes, “false equivalent, you had an agenda that led to my probable demise, Wanda just wanted to ensure our safety by determining whether or not your loyalties were with HYDRA. Also we’ve all had her in our minds, when we met she mind tricked us all into living out our worst nightmares. A world without tacos is not a world I want to live in,” he says flippantly. That wasn’t what he saw but he wouldn’t tell anyone but Nat what his worst nightmare was like, that the world that was his worst fear come to life was a world in which he killed everyone he loved of his own free will, wanting them all dead until they actually were and then he felt guilty. Sometimes their faces still haunted him at night.

Coulson seems to sense there’s something more to that story but he probably can’t access his thoughts properly to find out what. He probably should talk to Fitzsimmons about dissolving that bond sometime soon. The alphas seem to have nothing to say to his statement regarding safety, probably because they could see the necessity in it now. It wasn’t like they made a regular habit of having Wanda invade innocent people’s minds, that would be awful. Or hilarious, the shit she overheard in people’s minds was priceless though in her defense she didn’t seek out the random bits of information that leaked through. “So what’s Stark’s deal?” the brunette asks, “he’s missing for two years and turns up here? Does he even know what happened to his company? His business partner?”

Clint snorts, “he had Obi killed, and he orchestrated Pepper’s take over and the new business plan. Trust me, he’s in the loop,” Clint says.

Coulson looks shocked, “he had Obadiah killed?” he says, surprised by this knowledge.

“To be fair Obadiah tried to kill him first via terrorists so it was kind of warranted. Plus Obadiah almost killed Pepper when he found out she knew he was alive and wouldn’t give up his location, which she still doesn’t know by the way,” he tells them, amused by their surprise.

Steve frowns, “and why are you telling us all of this?” he asks, again thinking up some very valid questions. Smart one.

“What’re you going to do, escape and tell everyone that Tony Stark, the genius inventor, didn’t actually disappear, instead he’s currently underground leading a group of omegas on international spy missions for the greater good? Yeah, that’s believable,” he scoffs, “you can’t do much of anything with a story so fucking absurd no one will believe it, no matter how true it might be,” he says.

Coulson looks annoyed at this and his jaw clenches, Clint can feel his irritation rising, his frustration at being clueless with nothing to grasp on to. It wasn’t like he could call his precious S.H.I.E.L.D up and tell them what was going on, and he probably knew there was no fucking way any of them would let him make contact with any of his old coworkers. It sucked to be helpless, Clint knew, but at least none of them had a nefarious agenda, they all wanted Coulson and Co out as soon as humanly possible.

“And what, exactly, do you plan to do with us?” the brunette asks, tilting his head to the side in question and examining Clint closely.

He wasn’t going to find anything useful; it wasn’t like Clint was going to lie to them. “Dissolve that pesky bond between me and Coulson here, feed you, maybe give you some water, and then dump your ass in the middle of know where with no possible way for you to track your way back here,” he says bluntly. They’ve had extensive discussions about where, exactly, to drop them off. Skye suggested flying them to Naples and ditching them there but Tony hadn’t wanted to waste the money on the practical joke, Skye was sad about that.

Coulson raises an eyebrow, “that’s possible?” he asks, frowning.

“Yeah, Fitzsimmons figured it out years ago with Bruce’s help. It’s a little necessary here, given alpha’s irritating habit of biting us all in some sad attempt at controlling us,” he says, irritated. He had like six claim bites and one was on his ass. Okay, so that one was kind of a funny story, but it was no less annoying, and he hadn’t enjoyed the shots he had to endure from Fitzsimmons so he didn’t end up with a disease or something.

The three of them exchange a surprised glance but none of them actually say anything. Clint sticks around to annoy Coulson because the man was so easily flustered but he had tons of patience. It was like Clint’s personal playground, he was now determined to find Coulson’s limits and run with them. So far he had discovered that Coulson preferred authentic cuisine and Taco Bell made him physically sick just thinking about it, which, that was fair, but Taco Bell was his _jam_. He probably loved it more than he should, and even though Nat would never admit it she was also a fan of bad take out foods. He also learned that Coulson was at home in a suit, which made no sense given his job, that he preferred short hair over long, and the he hero worshipped the shit out of Steve. So did the brunette, Bucky, but from he gathered they were best friends so that made some sense. He and Nat had the same problem sometimes, thinking the other was infallible when they both knew that was far from the truth.

Tony shows up some time later with pizza and Clint immediately loses interest in the word game he was playing with Coulson. “God, it’s like you have the attention span of a child,” he mumbles, throwing Clint an irritated look.

Tony snorts, “you haven’t seen anything yet, just wait until Nar gets here and then suddenly he’s basically five all over again. Try anything I’ll kill you with no hesitation,” he says and unlocks the door, going from zero to sixty in three seconds of less. Very Tony Stark Clint decided, Tony was a pretty blunt guy and didn’t bother beating around the bush unless his opponent decided it was a game and then Tony was in it to win it.

Steve blinks in confusion and frowns at Tony, “that was unnecessary,” he says and Tony gives him a look that made Clint shrink in fear. _Damn_ , when did blondie shit in Tony’s cheerios?

“From what I’ve gathered about you you speak almost entirely in Commands, which you freely used on Fitzsimmons _repeatedly_ even after this one,” Tony gestures to Bucky, “told you to cut it out, then the two of you track them down to do god knows what and-”

“Look, you don’t know-” Steve starts but Tony cuts him off.

“What? What don’t I know? What excuse could you have possibly thought up to justify stripping someone of their agency like that without their express permission, hmm? Please, tell me what circumstance you can think of where it is _ever_ okay to do that,” he snaps and wow, Clint’s seen Tony angry, but not like that.

Coulson carefully moves closer to him, “is this normal?” he asks quietly.

Clint shakes his head, “not even remotely, but Tony doesn’t really take to kindly to being told what to do, or seeing others being told what to do. He’s a big believer in free will,” he says, perhaps a bit more casually than he should have. Tony gives him a look but seems to recognize that Clint was playing it cool like he always did. Sometimes it was better to pretend nothing was wrong and try and move past the problem than it was to try and deal with it head on and end up stuck in it for far too long.

Steve opens his mouth to reply and then shuts it, looking down, “you’re right, sorry,” he says softly.

Tony rolls his eyes, “’sorry’ doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that you’re either too stupid or to ignorant to figure out the difference between actual speech and Commands and at no point in your life did you decide that wow, maybe your ability to control an entire subset of people with your voice is a problem when you’re unaware of the difference between talking and Commands. People like you shouldn’t be allowed to live,” Tony snarls, stomping off before anyone could say anything else.

Clint raises his eyebrows, “wow, okay, that was unusual,” he says. Tony wasn’t usually a huge fan of death, not if it could be avoided, so his outburst was totally out of character.

Steve looks shocked, “did I do something wrong? I mean like I did, but besides the obvious, because that was personal,” Steve says, looking at Clint.

Clint sighs, “Tony… he doesn’t exactly have a very good history with Commands and he doesn’t much like being confronted with that,” he says.

“That isn’t my problem,” Steve says, and he’s not wrong, except he is.

“Yeah, maybe not directly, but when you’re in a room with someone who could at any point open his mouth and whatever comes out of it may very well take away your ability to make your own decisions that becomes your problem. Do you even understand how terrifying that is? Maybe it isn’t a problem for you, but this is our lives, and we’d rather we be the one’s calling the shots for ourselves,” Clint says a little harshly before he too walks away. He didn’t have the patience to deal with this right now.

*

Bruce sighs, “Natasha stop playing with the cultures, you don’t even know what those are,” he says, pulling yet another petri dish from her hand. He was fairly certain she was making some sort of art with them but they were science experiments, not play toys. Also her art looked like shit, she was terrible with matching colors, Clint picked out all her clothes.

“I’m making a picture with them,” she says and points to her terrible… whatever it was supposed to be. He can feel himself make a face but he can’t stop it, it was just too horrible looking, “you’re making the face!” she accuses.

“I am not,” he lies, his face scrunching up more.

“Are too, it doesn’t look that bad,” she says, second guessing her choices now and looking it over.

“Nat, it looks like you threw condiments at the table, and not in an interesting and abstract way. Just accept that you aren’t good with colors and that Clint will forever be the one dressing you. You’re good at other things, like out eating Clint, scaring the shit out of Tony, pranking Fitzsimmons, and you’re also pretty good at espionage and kicking the living shit out of people but you don’t really count that so,” he shrugs and trails off.

She sighs, “What kind of moron can’t match stuff,” she mumbles, examining the cultures to try and see where she went wrong.

“Wanda, she’s terrible at matching anything that isn’t black and red, you two have that in common,” he says and Nat gives him a look, “what, it’s true. Also Fitz, without Simmons he’d be a walking disaster,” he points out. Now the two practically had the same style, there were entire betting pools dedicated to figuring out if they actually just shared all their clothes. So far they’ve somehow managed to keep their possible clothes sharing a secret from the rest of them.

Natasha doesn’t look pleased with this answer and bends down, leveling herself with the table the cultures were on, squinting at them as if they’d confess all their secrets if she glared hard enough. He returns to his work while Natasha sets herself up for another colorful failure that she wouldn’t accept. Tony walks in then, looking pissed off and ready to pick a fight, but Natasha’s shitty artwork catches his eye before he does something stupid. “Literally what is that?” he asks, frowning at the terribly laid out cultures.

Natasha throws her hands up, “oh come on, you’ve had people dress you your whole life, how can you be better at matching things!” she says.

Tony snorts, “just because I have designers clothe me doesn’t mean I don’t know what looks good,” he says and starts rearranging the cultures. Natasha leans forward, watching Tony’s work intently as if she could acquire the skill to match things just by watching Tony. If that was the case she would have been able to match things long ago.

“Your fashion sense in the nineties and early thousands suggests otherwise,” she says, raising an eyebrow at him.

Tony glares at her, “we agreed not to talk about that,” he says, waving a culture around. Bruce grits his teeth, he loved them both, but neither of them knew anything about science safety he swore, the two of them were always messing something up and Tony damn well knew better. So did Nat, but she wasn’t a scientist so he at least forgave her indiscretions for the most part, Tony did not have such luck.

“Tony you wore what was basically a _space suit_ to a movie premiere, there is no way any of us are letting that go,” she tells him, grinning. Right, Bruce remembered that particular suit, it was absolutely hideous and he will forever remain convinced that Tony only wore it so he got more attention than the people that starred in the movie. Which he did.

“Is no one going to talk about that ugly dragon scale suit thing?” he asks, jumping on the ‘make fun of Tony’ bandwagon. Natasha snorts loudly and starts laughing at Tony, who looks very upset that he was being ganged up on.

“You know what, screw you two, what were you wearing at the time that was so much better, hmm?” he asks, crossing his arms and raising his eyebrows.

“Kevlar and the blood of my enemies,” Natasha says without missing a beat.

Tony sighs and accepts defeat from her and turns to Bruce, who makes a face, “I don’t know, science things?” he suggests. Like he knew or cared about what he was wearing, at least not then. Now he had to keep pants in mind in case he hulked out because no one deserved to see a naked hulk.

“That dragon suit was awesome, I don’t care what any of you savages have to say about it,” he says and goes back to rearranging the cultures. “Did you check out the stuff I dropped off?” he asks, getting around to the point he probably came here to discuss with Bruce.

“Yeah, nothing of note except a freakish amount of S.H.I.L.E.D things,” he says, “seriously, lanyards, shoelaces, shirts, pants, a _tie_ , Clint is right; Phil Coulson is obsessed with his work. Probably to an unhealthy degree,” Bruce reports.

Tony nods, “well, guess that’s better than the alternative. Skye get anything interesting off their phones?”

“Steve and Bucky seem to enjoy Pepe memes,” Natasha says and Bruce wrinkles his nose, he hated those stupid Pepe things.

“Great, fucking Pepe, they couldn’t enjoy something that was actually good?” Tony rolls his eyes and shifts a few more cultures around.

“Better than minions,” Natasha points out and oh my god, if Clint, Natasha, and Skye stuck fucking minions on everything in his lab one more time he was absolutely going to hulk out on them and he wouldn’t even care. Well, he would, but probably not until after he chased them all into hiding.

“Fuck minions, but Pepe is basically the same thing,” Tony says, “so nothing worthy of mentioning, then?” he asks.

Nat shakes her head, “no, other than Coulson getting a few texts we’re certain are in some sort of code from someone named ‘Bobbi’ and one from ‘May’ there wasn’t anything worth digging deeper for.”

“Send the texts to JARVIS, I’m sure between the two of us we’ll be able to figure out what they mean,” he tells them, “also Natasha, please stop trying to figure out how to match colors, it’s painful to watch,” he says and leaves them alone again.

*

He watches them all from the random balcony he had built inside for a reason he can’t remember now, probably some inside joke he had with Rhodey, but it was kind of useless. Nice to sit on, but without an actual purpose. There were windows above his head too, to let in some natural light, but they were rarely open because light reflected off of them and there was a lot of air traffic here, it wouldn’t do to get busted by the U.S government, especially when none of them technically existed anymore in almost any form. Aside from Tony, who was simply presumed dead, no one else had any trace of themselves anywhere. Skye had erased them all from every internet database there was aside from a few government systems that might miss the data and try and track down who took it. If someone knew where to look they could probably recover their identities, deleting things off the internet permanently wasn’t exactly possible, but they’d have to get through all of Skye’s measures and she was good, very good. Almost good enough to throw him for a loop.

“Thor is irritating the hell out of me, get rid of him,” Loki says, appearing behind him.

Tony rolls his eyes, “if you didn’t want him around you should have tried harder to lose him,” he says. Natasha had confirmed that Loki hadn’t tried very hard to shake Thor, and they all knew that if Loki didn’t want to be found he wouldn’t be.

Loki snorts, “he keeps trying to feed me green leaves,” he grumbles.

“It’s called lettuce, it’s good for you,” Tony says, heavy on the sarcasm and condescension.

“I know what lettuce is, I think he’s trying to feed me kale, but I am a person and not a rabbit. I don’t eat leafy greens. Also anything leave-like taste like shit, why can’t he make stir fry or something?” Loki says, looking pinched and annoyed.

“I wonder if aliens have been chilling on earth for a long time and are weirded out by our traditions. Like Christmas, we take a dead bird, rip its innards out through its ass, stuff bread, spices, and chopped vegetables up there and then cook it in order to celebrate a mythical god’s son’s birthday. Except Christmas isn’t Jesus’ birthday, Jesus was born sometime in the fall, but when Europeans were spreading Christianity when they were taking over countries and trying to stomp out Paganism they appropriated Pagan holidays to force assimilation. I bet aliens find that confusing,” he says, looking over at Nat and Clint arguing while Coulson tries to mediate, and Fitzsimmons giving each other looks presumably because they disagreed on something.

Loki frowns at him, “I remember why I left you now,” he says and Tony grabs his arm before he can take off.

“Thor, he’s up here!” he says and Thor beams at him, happily running off to fetch Loki and force feed him greens.

Loki looks pissed and pulls himself from Tony’s grip, he still wasn’t fast enough to outrun Thor though, who appeared just in time to shove the plate at Loki and start an argument about whether or not Loki actually liked salad.

Tony looks back over the crowd beneath him and finds Skye talking to Coulson, who was giving Clint and Nat worried looks as the two wrestled over something, Skye was probably giving him a lesson in Clint 101. He finds Steve and Bucky off to the side sticking close to each other and observing everyone else and Wanda half obscured in a doorway watching them. Steve happens to look up and meet Tony’s gaze, holding it for a minute as if expecting Tony to look away or tell him all his secrets. He does neither and eventually Steve moves on to observe something else.                                                            


	5. Reckless

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got an assignment done today, I thought I'd treat myself to writing something I enjoy :)

Bruce was pretty used to weird things happening to him, when one lived with Tony Stark it was a regular part of life, also Clint and Natasha. Especially Clint. And Natasha. However the last thing he expected when he walked into his lab was to hear sniffles in the corner of the room, and he definitely didn’t expect to find a crying alpha in that corner sniffling. “Are you crying?” he asks Coulson, he was fairly sure that was his name, he’d been a little preoccupied with his lab lately and frankly he didn’t really care about the alphas hanging around. It wasn’t like they were a threat to him, if anything he was a threat to them.

Coulson looks up with red rimmed eyes, “no, you’re crying,” he says, sniffling loudly.

Bruce frowns, “what? That doesn’t even make sense,” he says, “why are you crying?” he asks because he wasn’t going to be able to focus with Coulson sniffling in the corner. Maybe if he fixed it or at least made him feel better he’d leave Bruce in peace.

Coulson slumps in his spot and looks at the ground, “sad Captain America fan theories,” he says quietly, “don’t tell Clint, he’ll make fun of me,” he says.

Bruce resists the urge to throw Coulson out of his lab and walks over to his phone, picking it up and dialing Clint’s number. “Hey, Brucie, Bruster, Bruuuuuce,” Clint answers and Bruce immediately regrets calling him, this shit happened every time he made that damn mistake.

“Your boyfriend is crying over Captain America in my lab, get him out,” he says bluntly and hangs up.

Coulson starts crying harder, “he can never go home,” he says through thick tears before he blubbers unintelligibly, presumably more about how sad Captain America was.

“Oh for god sakes, he’s a fictional character, go cry about him elsewhere and kindly remove yourself from my lab. And don’t touch anything on your way out either,” he says, making shooing motions at Coulson. Coulson continues to sniffle for a solid ten minutes before Clint comes barging in with Natasha on his back, letting out a loud battle cry before losing his grip on Nat and dropping her.

Nat kicks the back of his knee and Clint goes down, barely catching himself before he ate shit, “you fucker, I can’t believe you dropped me!” she says, outraged.

“It was an accident!” he protests, holding out a hand to help her up. She smacks his hand away playfully and picks herself up before going over to Bruce and jumping on his back.

He catches her and sighs, “why must you two always do this?” he asks, shifting so that Natasha was more comfortable.

“Because we are adorable and you love us,” she says, pressing her face to the back of his head.

“You are adorable, Clint is questionable, and I love you when you are not interrupting my science, kindly remove the crying alpha and shoo,” he says, full well knowing Natasha is not done irritating the hell out of him. Truthfully he wouldn’t have it any other way and as much as having Natasha messing up his lab space annoyed him he secretly enjoyed their ritual. Besides, she was an amazing organizer and she always cleaned up her mess better than he ever could, including colour coded labels for everything. If only Tony would take note and do the same but alas the man _loved_ organized chaos and it showed very much in his work. Granted that’s what worked for Tony but Bruce liked lists, notes, organization, and order in his work, like Fitzsimmons though none of them managed to get their beloved order. At least he had Natasha to clean up his messes, poor Fitzsimmons were forever cleaning up after Tony, who rummaged through their work and left sticky notes all over their designs for ‘improvements’ or so he thought.

Coulson looked betrayed that Bruce would sell him out to Clint so fast and Clint looked amused, “crying over Captain America? Really? You’re an embarrassment,” he says playfully and holds out his hand to Coulson to help him up. Bruce watches the interaction with interest because something was different about the way the two interacted that intrigued him, and Natasha, they both thought Clint and Coulson would make an adorable couple but they were pretty sure that the two of them would be too damn stubborn to initiate anything. Natasha seemed to think that was a license to meddle, _it’s_ science _Bruce!_ But he thought they should let Clint and Coulson work it out themselves, like they had though Natasha seemed to think Tony and Loki meddling was what pushed them together. He respectfully disagreed, mostly because he didn’t want to give Loki and Tony credit for all their hard work.

Coulson takes Clint’s hand and lets Clint help him up, still sniffling but making no attempt to hide his tears from Clint. Interesting, usually alphas, especially men, put up some stupid macho attitude to pretend like they didn’t have feelings but Coulson seemed to have no such inclination. “They’re adorable. We have to lock them in a room together until they make out,” Natasha whispers in his ear. He shakes his head and gives her a look over his shoulder; she knew he didn’t like it when people whispered in his ear. It creeped him out. She presses her face to the back of his head again, “sorry,” she mumbles into his hair rather than his ear this time.

“I am not an embarrassment!” Coulson protests, “I just have a lot of feelings okay? Don’t you give me that look, Barton, I’ll mess up all your arrows!” he threatens and Clint gasps.

“You take that back!” he says, clutching his chest in mock offense. Natasha makes a squealing sound and wiggles around in glee. Thankfully he manages to keep his hold on her lest he accidentally drop poor Nat and end up on the floor like Clint almost had.

*

Tony was holed up in the lab, reconfiguring a few things for his suit, adding a few of the designs Fitzsimmons had made, with his own alterations of course. “Sir, Bucky is waiting outside the door,” JARVIS tells him and Tony sighs.

“Let him in,” he says, ignoring the door with more purpose than he had been before.

“Are you sure?” the AI asks him and he nods, knowing JARVIS would pick up his movement via motion detecting cameras and infer what it meant. He hears the door to his lap slide open and footsteps approaching but he ignores the person they belong to.

“How come your lab is locked and the others aren’t?” Bucky asks, lifting his nose and sniffing the air. Creepy.

“I don’t play well with others,” he says, which wasn’t false, but he also liked to keep his work to himself. He was a perfectionist and people getting ahold of his work before it was ready irritated him… no, made him anxious, very anxious. Obi broke into his lab once, got ahold of an unfinished prototype and showed it to the board. He had been livid enough to make every lab he’s had since uncrackable, he had tested them all on Skye and even her skill combined with Fitzsimmons and Bruce hadn’t been able to crack his codes. That was just the way he liked it, and besides, his work was dangerous in the wrong hands, hell, half the time it was dangerous in his own hands. It was best he kept it to himself.

“That runs contrary to everything I’ve seen in the last day and a half,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow, “so how come you’re special enough to get a locked lab?” Bucky tilts his head to the side in question and Tony glares at him. _Why_ Bucky thought he was entitled to an answer to his questions he had no idea.

“I don’t like the idea of someone getting their hands on my work, it isn’t finished and it’s highly dangerous. People shouldn’t have access to it,” he says and watches Bucky closely. Bucky wasn’t the only one with observation skills, Natasha had taught him a thing or two and even if he was terrible at reading micro expressions he was good enough to see when people were surprised, questioning his word, confused. It was all stuff he had encountered a million times before, usually in business meetings, it was almost like the alphas he worked with ninety percent of the time were surprised he actually knew what he was doing, that he was as smart as people made him out to be.

“And you think you have more of a right to work with it than others, hmm, that it?” he asks, eyes narrowing.

“No,” he says bluntly, “but I know how it works better than most anyone else, and I can monitor it if I know I’m the only one with access to it. Then I talk to Fitzsimmons and Bruce.” The three of them generally looked at applications, if it did more harm than good, what might happen should it fall into the wrong hands, what to do it if did.

“You must value their opinions highly if you’re so secretive about your work,” he says. Bucky was pacing in front of him while he sat on the ground, it was making him nervous and he didn’t must like that.

He pulls himself off the ground, “what does it matter to you? If I have my way you’ll be gone by the end of the day,” he tells him, turning his back on Bucky and walking back to his desk and fiddling around with a few of the things scattered over the surface.

“You can’t exactly toss us all out, Coulson and your Clint have a bond,” Bucky says, paying no attention to Tony rummaging through the stuff on his desk. Honestly, how many times did he and his team have to fuck these people over before they understood that they were not to be trifled with? Once more, apparently.

“That’s easily fixable,” he says and turns around, quickly reaching out and grabbing Bucky’s metal arm pressing a small object to it and pressing the button on it.

Bucky yelps and clutches his now useless arm, “what the fuck was that?” he snaps, glaring at Tony.

Tony takes a step forward, “let me be perfectly clear here, I don’t know what you’re playing at with this pathetic little show of yours, but you are not in a position of authority here. This space belongs to me and the other people who live here, _not_ you, and certainly not either of your friends bonded to Clint or not. You don’t get to come in here and pull some bullshit interrogation act like you have a right to question me about anything. If you want to talk to me or anyone else, fine, but you talk to us like equals, not like we’ve been arrested and we’re in the middle of an interrogation. That was a localized EMP, designed to take out whatever tech it’s attached to and that only, your arm’s been shorted, don’t think I don’t know how to level the playing field. This is my territory, start acting like it,” he snaps and turns around, making a dismissive gesture.

He doesn’t expect Bucky to walk away but he’s still somewhat surprised when Bucky doesn’t go anywhere. “Are you going to take this thing off my arm?” Bucky asks eventually, sounding annoyed.

Tony turns around and pulls the small piece of tech off, “there, your arm any less shorted?” he asks sarcastically. Bucky looks irritated when his arm doesn’t do anything and seems to think a bit too late that asking Tony to remove his tech was fucking useless because it had already done his job.

Bucky sulks for a few more minutes, obviously not recognizing that he has been dismissed, before speaking again. “He isn’t that bad you know,” he says eventually, sounding as sulky as he looked.

“I’m assuming you mean your blonde friend,” Tony says, shuffling some blueprints around, “his intentions don’t matter so much as his actions in this case and before you go spouting off about trying to be a good person and maybe going wrong in a few places or whatever I know what that’s like. I used to blow people up for a living, remember? Didn’t make me a good person, it didn’t make me any less damaging, and it didn’t make me any less arrogant for dismissing everyone who tried to call me out, and it sure as hell isn’t going to unkill everyone who’s been murdered by my weaponry. My intentions may have been good, but my effects were a global disaster, and Steve isn’t any different, he just effects people in a different way and believe me, being stripped of personal choice is a lot more terrifying than death.” Mutilation less so, but he knew what that was like too, he got a little poetic justice in the form of his arc reactor but he supposed he more than deserved that.

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just watches Tony work, which was only unnerving until Tony tuned him out to focus on the gauntlet he was trying to alter. Working all the small pieces in was a pain in the ass, not to mention making the exoskeleton a manageable thickness. Fitting all those pieces together like that was nothing short of art in his opinion and it took a lot of time, alterations, recalculating, intelligence, and spatial awareness. Also he had to pad himself from the inside so he didn’t get sliced to ribbons by his own tech when he was inevitably knocked around, and on top of all that he needed to make sure the entire suit was lightweight but the weapons had to be no less effective. Nothing less than a genius level intelligence could pull it off and my all accounts his suit was impossible, he was certain there wasn’t a person on this planet that could pull off making a replica with any level of effectiveness. He’s had Fitzsimmons try and replicate his results dozens of times, even with Bruce’s help, and even the occasional outsider they were unable to pull it off. Even with step by step instructions on how to build it they had failed. By all accounts the technology that made up his suit didn’t actually exist, not in this time period, and it wouldn’t for at least the next ten years.

There was a reason Stark Industries was the best, so much so that they hadn’t suffered any damage during the recession, and even after everyone jumped overboard when Pep announced ending weapons sales he only lost millions. That should have ended his career, dead in the water, but it only took a few months to get back on track and within a year and a half they were back on top and making more than ever. Some people thought Stark was just a name, that all the money was in the brand stamp rather than the actual product. They were very, very wrong and that was why he was the best at what he did, people consistently underestimated the value of his work and it consistently outranked every other product group out there. He just bought Apple for Christ sakes, and people were ten times happier with the alterations he made to the products. It helped that he listened to the feedback he got rather than assume he knew best because he was smarter. He _was_ smarter but that didn’t mean his user base was stupid, and they knew what they wanted more than he did most of the time. It was a big business mistake people made all the time, not listening to the user base, and it was what put a lot of people out of business. He’s never had any such issues, thank you, and it delighted him that people were mad about that.

He worked on; oblivious to Bucky’s sulking in the corner while he tried to figure out the mechanics of the damn gauntlet. Eventually he figures it out, he had to shuffle a few things around, and he remembers Bucky again when he happens to look over to find the alpha slumped over in the corner of his lab with his useless arm in his lap. “Can you fix this?” he asks, giving Tony some very gloomy looks. Adorable. Wait, what?

“Fix it yourself,” he says, tossing the gantlet onto his desk with the rest of the materials he had been toying around with. Only the rest of the suit needed to be altered now, so there was that.

“I have no idea how to do that and you know it, besides, I’ve sat here for the last three hours while you tinkered with that metal suit hand and it was pretty clear that you’re whole heartedly invested in your tech. Aren’t you the least bit curious about my arm?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

Bucky thought he was being clever, trying to manipulate Tony but playing on his interest in technology, but Tony wasn’t a fucking moron, a dog could have seen through that. Shit, Clint’s soggy tacos from Taco Bell could see though that. “You aren’t clever, stop trying to be. I’m not going to fix your arm because you made a very terrible attempt at manipulation, I’m genuinely curious and if you’ll let my poke at your arm than great. Get over here,” he instructs. Bucky grins and pulls himself to his feet while his metal arm dangles uselessly. It was actually kind of funny to watch.

“Are you seriously laughing at an amputee that you purposefully re-disabled?” Bucky asks, taking mock offense to Tony’s snort of laughter.

Tony rolls his eyes, “you were never not disabled, dipshit, you just happen to have a very well made arm attached to you. And yes, I’m seriously laughing at how fucking stupid you look, now sit,” he instructs, gesturing for Bucky to sit on a stool he had laying around for some reason.

Bucky follows his instructions and perches on the stool, shedding his shirt while he was at it and accidentally catching it on his now-useless arm. He detangles himself and Tony rolls over in his desk chair, tucking one leg under himself and getting to work. “So what gave you think giant chip on your shoulder?” Bucky asks after a few minutes.

Tony considers telling him to fuck off, but that might mean he’ll take off arm and all so he decides to go with the flow for now. “I’m fucking tired of people seeing me only as an omega and not an actual person, of people thinking ‘omega’ is synonymous with ‘weak’, of people thinking it’s natural for me to be lesser than them for being born a certain way. It’s what we’re all sick of, some more so than others,” he says. Clint is deaf, Wanda and Nat were women, he and Bruce had mental health issues though Bruce’s came with the added turning into a giant green rage monster, and all of them were some level of queer, plus Wanda was also an immigrant. It was fucking annoying, being reduced to only those parts, or in Tony’s case being seen as a ‘success’ despite being an omega, like he had somehow risen above nature to earn his place in the world rather than being an omega and being successful, not one or the other. He wasn’t like an alpha because he had business sense; he was like an omega because he fucking was one. Not to mention people seemed to casually ignore that he slept with guys too, because apparently being a womanizer was a good thing. Literally what the fuck?

“So what, you think that being pissed off at the world is going to help you somehow?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Tony rolls his eyes hard, “no, I demand the respect I deserve and instead of getting it like you do I get reduced to being pissed off at the world for expecting to be treated like a person and an equal,” he snaps. Bucky at least has the good sense to look cowed by that statement.

He works in silence for a few more minutes, taking much longer than he needed to with the arm, he could have fixed it in minutes if he wanted to but Bucky didn’t know the wiser and he wanted to know what was up with the arm. “How did you all end up here? A few of you aren’t even from this country,” he says, looking at Tony out of the corner of his eye, gauging he reaction Tony assumed.

He shrugs, “I don’t know Nat and Clint’s story, just that he was in Russia and she was in HYDRA and somehow he got her out. She went on a massive killing spree, raising her status as Black Widow from mildly scary ghost story to terrifying legend.” Bucky’s head snaps around so fast Tony wasn’t sure how he didn’t get whiplash from the movement.

“She’s the Black Widow?” he asks, looking shocked.  

“Mmhm,” Tony hums, disinterested in Bucky’s surprise at that revelation. Eventually Bucky prompts him to continue. “Nat and Clint teamed up, found Skye right before the CIA did after she hacked them, she wasn’t in long enough to get anything useful though, still, her skill set was a threat and they wanted her gone. Didn’t happen, obviously. They pulled Fitzsimmons out of some hazing ritual where god knows what happened to them, they don’t talk about it, that Nat and Clint stumbled upon by chance. They found me in the desert shortly thereafter; we pulled Wanda out of some HYDRA facility when liberating my tech from those fucks. She had a brother too, be he got a wee bit shot but about two dozen machine guns. I found Loki in a bar and should have listened to everyone when they told me he was bad news, and Loki found Bruce shortly after his disastrous attempt at experimenting on himself,” he tells Bucky. The story was vastly over simplified and skipped over a lot of very important details but it didn’t much matter, he didn’t need to know the details anyways.

“And you all do what, exactly? Regularly break into government agencies?” he asks.

Tony shakes his head, “no, not unless we need to, we’ve been trying to crack HYDRA but that shit runs deep, apparently government agency deep, and they have their own tech geniuses. The problem with that is that it’s either my father’s work or mine that’s typically used as the base for anything they create, and they’ve made some scary shit let me tell you, so I’ve been trying to get my tech out. Most of what’s made isn’t based off original design so in theory I remove my tech, they stop making weapons of mass destruction until they figure out something else. In the mean time we fucking crush them like a bug. It isn’t really going well,” he says.

“And you manage to take down entire bases on your own? Or individually in Clint’s case I guess, did you even send back up with him?” Bucky frowns, trying to figure out their operation.

“No need to send most any of us with backup, we’re all more than capable on our own except for Fitzsimmons, their almost strictly brains,” he says.

“That… sounds really dangerous, reckless even,” Bucky says, eyebrows drawing together.

“That’s efficient,” Tony says, “we don’t need the extra help, and when we have it it only gets in our way. When we need to we send more people in, work as a team on the ground and back here but for the most part we don’t need to send more than one of us. For all intents and purposes we’re basically all superhuman, a few of us actually are. HYDRA doesn’t stand much of a chance with us, shit, pretty much no one stands a chance against Wanda alone not to mention Bruce.” The guy shot himself in the head and came back and Wanda was telekinetic and telepathic, no one was going to get past her unless they pulled a Clint and electrocuted her fucking head.                                           


	6. Trust Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the last chapter someone commented with questions, some of them are cleared up here.
> 
> And for all intents and purposes Gamora is a regular human, so you know, not green.

So maybe he hadn’t thought his words through all that well but come on, what the hell was Bucky going to do with the knowledge that Nat and Clint were in Russia that one time? And anyone with a half a brain could infer that Fitzsimmons went to school at some point, and Skye was on like seven different watch lists, they probably already knew who she was even if it was only through her hacker handle. Besides, he was an _engineer_ not a _spy_ , how was he supposed to know any of that was actually important, especially without a definitive timeline? Well, there was a timeline after him, but that was only because he was a public figure and everyone knew when he did anything because he was a very loud and noisy person. He wasn’t used to having to keep secrets, okay? But no, Nat had thrown him in the dog house, otherwise known as his lab, and forbade him from speaking to anyone without her there to stop him from saying something dumb.

Which, in his defense nothing he said was dumb, and at least half of it was common knowledge they all probably already gathered. Plus Clint had a fucking mental bond with Coulson, why wasn’t Nat freaking out about that? God knows what they’ve probably gleaned off Clint, probably at least ten embarrassing moments per person, minus Skye, who had a habit of not being embarrassing at all. She sucked.

Of course as soon as he was done thinking that Nat all but threw Clint into the lab so he figured Clint was on dog house arrest too. “What’d you do?” he asks as the door to his lab slides shut with Nat glaring at them on the other side with her arms crossed. “Also how did I end up the leader of this group when Natasha is clearly the most qualified?”

Clint stumbles but catches himself before he falls over and gives Nat an irritated look before turning to Tony. “I may or may not have left my phone unattended and Coulson may or may not have gotten ahold of it,” he says, “and I think you ended up the unofficial official leader because you gave us all a home, actually several, but still. No more homeless equals great.”

Tony stares at Clint, trying to determine whether or not he was joking about that phone thing because excuse him, that was _way_ worse than revealing Nat was Black Widow. Admittedly he had thought that made her sound badass and dangerous, which she was, but apparently he gave away her entire skill set and really, it was hardly his fault he hadn’t thought of that. Okay so it was, and Loki had taken the opportunity to verbally insult him to the point that _Nat_ got offended on his behalf, but still.

“What?” Clint finally says, eyeing Tony suspiciously when he doesn’t say anything to his revealing that he had _practically given Coulson his phone_.

“You have got to be fucking kidding me? If we are this disorganized all the time it is a wonder we haven’t all died yet,” he says, rubbing his temples.

“Oh come on,” Clint says, “he only had the phone for like two minutes, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“It takes thirty seconds to trace a phone call, Clint! What the hell?” he says, throwing his hands up. And Nat thought _he_ was a problem, Clint basically gave their location away!

“In the movies it takes like five minutes!” Clint protests, flapping his hands around.

“For fucks sakes, Clint, this is not a movie! We’ve traced calls, how did you not know that?”

“How did you not know you were giving all our secrets away? I don’t know this shit, this isn’t my skill set, my skill set is finding extremely convoluted ways to escape imminent death and capture and also eating an inhuman amount of tacos. I don’t do the tech thing,” he says.

Fine, so he had a point, but going off what movies depicted, really? He would have thought with the amount of times Clint and Nat bitched about improper gun use, unrealistic fight scenes, and women _never_ putting their hair up during a fight he would know that movies got pretty much nothing right. Hell, _he_ got annoyed with improper gun use and he only built them. “Clinton Barton, you fucking dumbass, you know movies don’t get anything right!” he says, throwing a pen at Clint, which he expertly dodges.

“Okay, fine, but what’s done is done, how do we get out of this?” he asks. Tony opens his mouth to say the fuck if he knows but then he remembers why they were all alive despite at least one of them fucking up the plans.

They were damn geniuses at creating on the fly solutions to dumb ass problems that they accidentally created, well, usually that Tony created. “We were planning on getting rid of the alphas, but what if _we_ left and just sort of… ditched them here. It would take them awhile to find their way back to a city anyways and by then we could be on another continent,” he says. That could work, plus he hasn’t travelled in a while, he could do with a kind of vacation while America deals with the whole HYDRA thing.

Clint considers it for a minute or so, “sure, and maybe if we ditch Thor here too we won’t have to listen to Loki bitch about him so much,” he says. They consider it for a second before they start laughing; Loki wasn’t going to stop complaining about Thor whether he was around or not.

*

“ _You_ I get, but you? You’re a trained damn spy, Clint, what the hell could have encouraged you to fuck up that badly?” Natasha asks, hands on her hips and tapping her foot impatiently.

“Have you considered that the mental bond Clint has with Coulson allowed Coulson to mind fuck Clint into handing the phone over? Just a thought,” Tony says because he was not going down for screwing them all over alone, thanks. Clint shoots him a betrayed look but doesn’t say anything about it.

Natasha considers his theory for a moment before frowning, “Clint’s been bit before and nothing like that has ever happened, he’s always had to strong of a will, so why would this time be any different?” she asks. It was a logical train of thought but they could all see that the way Clint interacted with Coulson was vastly different than how he interacted with literally everyone else who’s succeeded in laying a claim bite in his ass. Literally that one time.

“Because I actually _like_ Coulson,” he says, “I’ve never been anything but outright disgusted with the people who bit me but Coulson, as ridiculous as it sounds, bit me by accident, not because he wanted to control me.”

Natasha’s brows draw together, “should that actually make a difference though?” she asks.

“In theory,” Tony says, “the point of the bond is to even out the power an alpha has over an omega with the Command, which obviously doesn’t require a bond to work. It’s supposed to give the omega more agency by allowing them access to their alpha’s mind, therefore giving them more ability to resist the Command if needed, and the alpha has access to the omega’s mind to know when they need to apply more pressure or release it. But that’s only in a perfect world scenario; usually the bond only allows people to feel one another’s emotions, sense when their partner is in danger, that kind of thing.”

Clint makes a face, “then why do people keep biting us if we’re supposed to get more agency instead of less? That’s fucking dumb,” he says.

“Because, in theory, if the alpha is particularly strong and the omega particularly weak it’s possible to override that agency and essentially trap the omega inside their own heads, basically making them a slave to whomever is in control,” he says, “but the chances of that happening are crazy rare, most people aren’t that strong and even less people are that weak. The bond works both ways, so most people are able to resist in one way or another, making it next to impossible to achieve total control. Doesn’t stop people from trying, obviously.”

“Great, so if Steve bit any of us we’d be fucked?” Natasha says, sighing and pinching her nose, shaking her head as she tries to find some sort of solution.

“No, we wouldn’t, we would essentially have to be as weak as Steve is strong for that to happen. I mean even if he did seem inclined to bite any of us all of us except maybe Fitzsimmons and Skye have a long history of being able to resist even the strongest of Commands, hell, both you and Wanda were genetically engineered to resist Commands. But even Fitzsimmons and Skye can resist, it’s just harder for them to, none of us would be so weak we couldn’t find _some_ way to disobey. Besides, like I said before, bond works both ways, it’s just as possible for a particularly strong omega to overtake an alpha; people just don’t consider that because alphas are associated with strength and omegas weakness.”

Natasha nods, processing the information fast, “so what changes in regards to the bond by Clint liking Coulson?” she asks.

“When people bit me before their intentions were to gain access to my mind and control my thoughts, but with a two way bond I could feel those intentions and resist harder than I could before they bit me. Coulson has no such intentions and I mean I wouldn’t really want to follow any Commands he laid out but I wouldn’t feel unsafe if I did, without the distinct need to fight for control of myself I probably let my guard down,” Clint says, “Sound right?” he asks Tony.

Tony nods, “exactly,” he says, “Bruce could give you a lot more on the biological fundamentals and all that, and a way more detailed explanation on how and why things work the way they do but I don’t think a genetics lesson is really necessary presently.”

Nat runs her hands through her hair, mumbling in Russian, which Tony had totally been meaning to learn so he could understand her when she was talking shit but for now he only understood a few words. ‘Sloppy’ and ‘stupid’ were in there, and some variation of fuck, he thinks, but she runs off before he can ask what she was mumbling about.

Clint watches her go for a minute before turning to Tony, “Bruce just did laundry, we should get all the sweaters out and see how many we can put on before we can’t move our arms,” he says, grinning.

“Hell yeah,” Tony says, getting out of his chair, leaving it spinning while he and Clint ran off to get the laundry.

*

“I know a guy,” Tony says, “trust me, he’s great.”

Natasha is looking at him like he’s grown a second head, are you fucking kidding me? _Trust_ you? You decided to give all our secrets away because you couldn’t use your brain for five minutes!” she tells him.

“Ever heard the name ‘Gamora’?” he asks, “he works with her. Well, for her, but you get the point,” he says.

Natasha seems to reconsider her stance on trusting him then, “and you think he’d be skilled enough to get this stuff?” she asks, shaking Coulson’s stolen S.H.I.E.L.D files. Apparently they weren’t the only ones who were sloppy, why else would he pack a bunch of files from a super-secret government agency in a damn duffle bag? He would have thought Coulson would have hid them at the very least, but he had left them sitting in the bottom of his duffle bag and Clint had snatched them on their way out. Tony assumed that, like Clint, Coulson had grown too comfortable with another person in his head and let his guard down. On the plus side there was enough there that they could pay Quill with some cool alien artifact.

“If he isn’t the rest of his team is,” Tony says, “plus we get cool shit!” Bruce had been excited about the ‘084’s’ as they were labeled in Coulson’s meticulously written, over organized, _color coded_ files because they had all been labeled that way due to an inherent misunderstanding of how they worked. He was excited too, and hanging out in the lab with Bruce was great, throw Fitzsimmons in there and it’s a party.

Peter Quill was an absolute asshole and that was why he was one of Tony’s favorites. He was a spunky beta Tony had met on a solo mission shortly after he had been found by Nat and Clint and they had both been after his weapons. Unfortunately a third contender had gotten in the mix and Peter and Tony figured fuck that guy and teamed up, removing Ronan from the equation only to have him replaced shortly thereafter with Gamora, who was much more badass than legend had led him to believe.

Gamora had kicked his ass and Quill’s all over the place but by sheer miracle Tony had managed to do what he had intended and destroyed the damn weapons. Gamora had been some pissed and Tony had taken off before he could get his ass beat by her again, leaving Quill to fend for himself. He had exchanged numbers with Peter though and when he got a call a few months later for some help on how to avoid detection from security systems he had built Tony was happy to help. It had turned out that Gamora had decided Peter wasn’t completely useless and had recruited him to her team of misfits, also dedicated to fucking HYDRA up.

Natasha was still skeptical of his ability to not fuck up but she goes with it, probably prepared to beat him and run should the situation call for it. But Tony wasn’t about to let her down again, Quill might be an asshole and a bit of a moron but he did know how to get shit done. “084’s” Peter says, scanning the papers Tony had handed over, which had gotten him an irritated look from Nat but she kept her mouth shut. “And what do I get out of it?” he asks, just like Tony figured he would, the selfish bastard.

“You can keep a trinket or two,” he says, “don’t give me that look, this shit is from _aliens_ , Quill, literal fucking aliens. That’s a good trade off.”

Peter considers it, “a hundred grand and a small trinket,” he says.

“I’m not a moron,” he says and Natasha gives him a skeptical look, “at least not a complete moron. You obviously have something specific in mind that you want. If Nat says its fine you can have it,” he says because Nat would know what to do, also she’d consult with him, Bruce, and Fitzsimmons first so technically it wasn’t as if she’d accidentally give something particular valuable or dangerous away.

Peter looks over his shoulder at her for a second before turning back, “half a million no trinkets,” he counters.

Tony grins, “deal,” he says and holds out his hand for Peter to shake, which he does.

“Hey Gamora!” Peter calls out towards the hallway, “order pizza, we can afford it now!” He looks stupid excited about this, which reminds Tony of Clint, before something else occurs to him and his excitement spikes again, “do I get to use your cool ass super suit!” he asks, whipping his head back to Tony, looking like an over enthusiastic puppy who was just handed a treat.

“Absolutely fucking not,” Tony says, crushing Quill’s spirits and earning an offended look from him.

*

He’s had some nasty headaches in his time but something about this one was particularly horrible. Coulson sits up and shudders, groaning when someone makes noise and it reverberates through his head, “what happened?” he grumbles.

Steve, who had been the one moving things around, looks over at him and lets out a sigh of relieve, “thank god, we thought you were dead but you still had a pulse so…” he trails off and shrugs.

“That tells me nothing,” he says and looks around when he realizes that he wasn’t blinking against the light, “why are all the lights off?” he asks.

“Because we’ve been ditched here and when Bucky tried to break into that room we figured the files were in he set off some other security measure and now even more of this place is closed off to us,” Steve tells him, “your bond with Clint telling you anything?” he asks.

Coulson frowns, trying to concentrate with little success, “umm. I’m not getting much, like he’s managed to close himself off or something but I think he’s… amused?” That didn’t make much sense to him but then Clint hadn’t just been ditched in some unknown facility with no knowledge of where they were, what they were doing, or how the hell to get out.

“Great. Also I hope you didn’t have anything particularly valuable in that bag you brought because they ransacked the thing,” he says.

“Shit!” he yells and stumbles to his feet, “please tell me none of those files were missing!”

Steve frowns, “what files? Please tell me there was nothing important in those files, Phil, because they definitely aren’t here.”

“They were files for the various 084’s I’ve found over the last couple months, I thought I was on to something so I took them with me… _shit_. But they’re with S.H.I.E.L.D… HYDRA, whatever, there’s no way they could get to them,” he says logically.

Bucky snorts, “Skye apparently managed to break into the CIA, Fitzsimmons got into S.H.I.E.L.D, we all know what Stark’s capable of, apparently Natasha is Black Widow, Clint took out a HYDRA base by himself _and_ took out a bunch of S.H.I.E.L.D agents while he was at it. I don’t think it would be wise to underestimate what they can do, plus they have to have connections all over the place to pull this off so even if they aren’t capable that doesn’t mean they don’t know someone who is,” he points out.

“God damnit,” he mumbles, “I fucked up. Does anyone remember yesterday or have we all forgotten an entire day?” he asks.

“I remember bits and pieces,” Bucky says, “but I think Wanda mind fucked us all.” Well that explained a lot, especially his splitting headache.

He leans against the desk he must have been knocked out beside, “so does anyone know what to do here?” he asks because he was a little lost.

Steve sighs, “well, seems how you haven’t seen the news, and thanks to Bucky triggering the damn alarm system we don’t have the full story, you don’t know that now we’re wanted terrorists. Like the three of us were specifically mentioned and pictured in the damn news report. We don’t have much choice but to find a few actual S.H.I.E.L.D agents and… I don’t fucking know, avoid being arrested?”

He rubs his temples and curses Clint’s ass, why did he have to bite him? Why couldn’t he have done something else to try and prevent his escape? “Well that’s just great,” he mumbles.

“Oh,” Bucky says, “and Clint vandalized all your S.H.I.E.L.D stuff, and he drew a mustache on your Captain America bobble head,” Bucky tells him.

“It isn’t a bobble head, it’s a pop vinyl and it’s a collectable! I can’t believe that bastard drew on it!” he says, perhaps more pissed off at Clint for that than for abandoning him here. He needed to get his damn priorities straight.

“For god’s sakes, Coulson, it’s a god damn bobble head of a fictional character, get over it.”

*

Peter hadn’t been overly pleased with having to be monitored when he went in, neither had Gamora, but they had been assured that it was for their own safety and that everyone who went on missions was monitored. Gamora hadn’t looked like she believed them at first but her and Nat did some eye talking and without moving a single muscle on their faces they seemed to communicate something to each other and she had gone along with it. Groot, Rocket, and Drax were currently elsewhere but Gamora had assured him Peter was all she needed to get in and out undetected.

Tony had figured something quick, in and out, but as per usual things took a different turn though, to be fair, that was at least half because Peter decided a fucking dance number was in order. Gamora covers his ass as he dances through the basement level of the building, already having gotten past the other security measures via hacking and Gamora shooting people, possibly to kill, Tony didn’t know what was in her gun and he didn’t feel compelled to ask. It was hard to feel bad for neo-Nazis getting shot.

Gamora decides she’s had enough of Peter acting like a twit when he snatches a rat off a filing cabinet and starts using it as a microphone and tells him to cut it out. Like a smart man he frees the rat and lets the rest of his dance number go, “so I’m curious about the whole heat thing. Do you all take care of each other, or like… what goes on there?” he asks, poking around at things.

“For gods sakes Quill, focus,” Gamora hisses at him, “and that’s a very rude question,” she chides, moving further into the basement.

“Nah,” Tony says, watching them through Skye’s laptop screen with everyone gathered around, “s’not that bad, he kind of has a point. Fitzsimmons made some suppressor, but instead of making us feel less like where going to overheat and dye once a month it eliminates having a heat in general. Only catch is that you have to get a damn needle of it once a month, and when you stop taking it you get a super heat, which, not fun. We’ve made good money selling it black market style, actually,” he says.

“See,” Peter says to Gamora, “he wasn’t offended.” Gamora makes an irritated noise and chooses not to comment on Peter being an asshole.

“No wonder you like him so much,” Natasha comments, “he’s basically you. Watching you two communicate is like watching the two of you jerk each other off.”

“Not really into dudes,” Peter says, “but for Tony I’d make an exception.”

Tony snorts, “duh, I’m me, who wouldn’t want to go there? Besides like asexuals or people who don’t like sex, you get the point,” he says.

“There are people who don’t like sex?” Peter asks, stuffing things into his bag.

“People who’ve had sex with you,” Gamora quips, appearing back at Peter’s side, “what else do we need?”

They go over their list, mumbling what they already got, “so only these two,” Peter says, “but this one kills people who touch it so I’m going to nope the hell out of that one because I like living, so the hammer then.”

Gamora makes another irritated noise, “we will get them all,” she says, “just don’t touch it, moron. And we need three, neither of us have gotten that staff either.” They two split up in order to find the proper 084’s.

“So how did you guys get the blue prints to this place? Something tells me neo-Nazi organizations aren’t handing out free maps to all who enter,” Peter says, getting to the hammer. He takes hold of the handle and pulls, nothing happens, he tries again, this time putting more effort into it and the thing doesn’t budge. “What the fuck?” he mumbles and tries again with the same failed attempts.

“Skye hacked HYDRA about a week ago, little less, she isn’t done with the coding quite yet but she managed to find this place pretty fast so who cares? Try and hold the hammer a different way,” Tony suggests.

Gamora comes back and sighs deeply when she finds Peter trying desperately to pull the hammer off the shelf it was on. She sets the long case she had been holding down and walks towards the hammer, “if you want something done right,” she mumbles and picks up the hammer, no resistance. That’s about when backup shows up to kill them in the basement and the two take-off, running for the already planned out escape route. It was pretty clear the two were seasoned when it came to out running people trying to kill them because they only have minimal problems escaping, they only lose one 084 that had just been something Peter thought looked cool, and Gamora gets grazed with a bullet but not shot.

“Well shit,” Peter says as they peel off in their car, “that was exciting. What the hell do you want with this shit anyways?” he asks as Gamora goes back over the list.

“Clint’s ex thought he was on to something with these specific 084’s, we wanted to know what it was, but if nothing else they’re out of HYDRA hands and that’s good enough for me,” Tony says.

“He isn’t my ex,” Clint mumbles, kicking Tony’s chair.

“You dumbass,” Gamora snaps, “you didn’t get the deadly one!”

Peter snorts, “who cares, we got a bunch of other stuff, and we got everything else, including the gender biased hammer, which is totally sexist,” he says.

Gamora looks at him like he’s particularly stupid, “if you seriously think that hammer is sexist towards men pull over so I can fight you. With the hammer.”

“Jeeze, Gamora, chill, I know reverse sexism isn’t a thing, it was a joke. Also I’ve already fought you and I would not like a repeat experience, thank you, you kicked me in the head like seven times.”

“Clearly it did nothing for your intelligence,” she grumbles, smacking Peter in the arm with a small smile.

*

Peter Quill was a slippery bastard and Tony knew it so when he tries his damndest to try and double cross them he isn’t really surprised. “We got the reports on these little bastards too, which you didn’t ask for so technically we’re owed more compensation. Pick of the litter on the cute little trinkets we picked up,” he says, raising an eyebrow at Tony. Gamora doesn’t look at all surprised, which either meant that this was planned, this sort of thing happened all the time, or her face just didn’t move ever. Tony figured all three were true.

He and Nat exchange a look, “alright, but my previous condition still applies, only if Nat clears it,” he says.

Peter considers it, “fine, but she chooses right now, no time alone with you, Bruce, or the Wonder Twins,” he counters and Tony agrees.

Natasha walks over to the neatly stacked reports and Peter scrambles to shoo her away, “oh no no, that’s cheating!” he protests, snatching the report Nat had grabbed out of her hand.

She snatches it back, “well you don’t mind cheating now do you?” she says sweetly, “now don’t mind if I take a page from your book.” She picks over the reports, matching them with the collected objects before turning to Peter, “what is it you want bad enough to try and half fuck us?” she asks.

Gamora and Peter exchange looks and she nods. Peter sighs, “the destroyer stone,” he says, gesturing to a glowing purple ball and not looking very happy about it.

Natasha goes back to her reports and reads it over, “if you’re so keen on dying who am I to stop you?” she says and tosses the stone to Gamora, who catches it out of muscle memory, too distracted to have caught it because she was paying attention to it. they leave shortly with their money, probably trying to avoid any changes of heart on Natasha’s behalf.

“Destroyer stone?” Tony asks, “that doesn’t sound very good.” Not that he was questioning Nat’s decision, but he was questioning her motives.

She shrugs, “they open that ball our planet as we know it goes bye-bye, whatever their plans for it it’s better than whatever HYDRA might have had in store. In my opinion I think they’re going to bury it somewhere it can’t be found, they’re too smart to do anything else with it.”

Tony snorts, “god damn slippery bastard,” he says, “let’s get pizza, Clint will be a particularly happy duck if we bring food back.”


	7. 100 Percent Fail Rate

“I thought you were getting something _important_ ,” Steve says, giving Coulson an irritated look when he returns with two bags full of Captain America stuff.

He was absolutely offended because excuse Steve, “this stuff _is_ important,” he says and hops into the back seat. Bucky looks even more done with his shit than Steve and that’s saying something.

“You seriously took out an entire precinct of cops for some fucking comics, a shield, and a couple bobble heads?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

“First of all this shield is an exact replica,” he says, “and these comics are worth thousands and those savage cops, who are supposed to serve and protect, were not treating them correctly, it just wasn’t ethical to leave them behind. And they are not bobble heads, they are pop vinyls, I have explained this several times. Now someone give me a knife.”

It takes him a good twenty minutes, he doesn’t want to ruin the shield, but he manages to separate the two halves to reveal a good chunk of money he’d been squirreling away in there for some time. The comics also had money pressed in the pages and, surprisingly, it was all still there. These cops were absolutely shit at their jobs. “You know I find it weird that cops will do anything to justify shooting a black person but I, a known terrorist according to public record, and a white man manages to take out an entire precinct with only two shots fired. And one of them was me, what the hell is that?” he asks. They all knew damn well what it was, but it was dumb and it needed to be pointed out.

“Frankly I’m shocked they labeled us terrorists to begin with us being you know, white men,” Steve says, “aren’t we supposed be mentally ill lone wolves or some shit?”

“Nah,” Bucky says, “we’re now associated with a Nazi organization, plus all records the general public can find on us says that we’re immigrants so its way easier to claim we’re exceptions. Coulson’s like the all American dream though, don’t know how they’re going to spin that.”

“I am not the all American dream,” he protests, “and according to the news I have a history of mental illness, which isn’t even true,” he says. Well, he had _problems_ , but everyone had those, and his obsessive cleaning habits certainly wouldn’t lead him to join fucking Nazis. That didn’t even make sense.  

“And _now_ we’re back to typical news tropes,” Steve says, “so Bucky and I are immigrants gone wrong and you’re absolved of all responsibility. That’s nice,” Steve mumbles.

“I’d like to remind everyone I have the money, and also I have this,” he says and holds up a USB drive, “every high profile case S.H.I.E.L.D has ever had.”

Bucky frowns, “did you pull that out of the bobble head’s ass?” he asks.

“It’s a _pop vinyl_ ,” he says through clenched teeth, these people were going to be the death of him he swore.

*

Thor wasn’t a moron despite what Loki may have thought, what a lot of people thought for some reason actually. It didn’t really matter because constantly being underestimated always seemed to work out to his benefit. He wasn’t particularly surprised at Loki’s shocked expression but he is surprised when Loki asks how he managed to find them. Usually Loki didn’t care much, content to either kick him out or let him stay until he got annoyed and then he’d kick him out, but it never really mattered to him how he got there so long as he left at some point.

“It wasn’t exactly difficult; I figured you had left the country to lie low while this HYDRA mess was sorted out. All I had to do was figure out _where_ you went, and Russia was out for a number of different reasons, Tony wouldn’t survive in British weather considering how much he complains about rain, and you loath France. Eventually I figured that where ever you went had to have good food, enough sun that Tony wouldn’t mind, small cities, and at least one of you had to have a positive connection to the place you went. And now we’re in Italy,” he says, grinning at Loki, who did not look impressed.

“Why was good food even a requirement?” he asks, gesturing for him to follow.

“Clint wouldn’t go anywhere that didn’t have good pasta, and he’s a pizza lover, nothing is more stereotypical of Italy than their love of pasta and pizza,” Thor points out.

Loki sourly agrees and leads him through the streets, presumably to where ever he was currently hiding, “you seem to be considerably cooperative,” Thor says suspiciously. Not that he didn’t love his brother, but he recognized that Loki was not to be trusted at the best of times, he always had some plot or another turning in his head and it usually didn’t do well to find oneself on the receiving end of Loki’s plans.

“You’re of use to me,” he says in way of a real explanation and Thor figures he’d go with it at least for now. He was used to dealing with Loki’s plans and as much as Loki thought he was a diabolical genius it simply wasn’t true in any capacity. Mostly Loki was motivated and pissed off, which was as much a weakness as it was a benefit though Loki refused to admit this, yet another reason his plans had a tendency to fall through.

He had suspected a relatively nice house, one that looked inconspicuous enough on the outside but more extravagant on the inside and he hadn’t been wrong. Clearly the location, a city small enough that it was easy to monitor, but large enough that a group of people showing up or disappearing out of nowhere would go unnoticed, was chosen by Natasha. The house, he suspected, was a joint decision between Tony and Natasha because Natasha wasn’t in the business of getting caught and Tony wasn’t about to give up his life style. Plus living in a nice house seemed to be something of a luxury for anyone who wasn’t Tony or Loki, who had both grown up rich, and thus they seemed content to live in Tony’s world even if they thought it was just temporary.

He wasn’t sure if the entire group had underestimated him because he was Loki’s brother, because they were prioritizing, or maybe Natasha had deemed him safe, or some other reason. Perhaps he had been monitored and he hadn’t noticed, Wanda could manipulate minds, and JARVIS seemed to monitor everyone, including Tony, which he found interesting. He would have thought that Tony, the obvious leader of the group, would be exempt from the rules as most leaders seemed to be but that didn’t seem to be the case and it appeared to make the group more efficient. It was clear they all knew that they had strengths and weaknesses in different areas and they were content to let someone more talented take over. It was an incredibly interesting dynamic to watch even if he was an outsider looking in.

Even Loki, who didn’t seem to be a fan favorite, had a certain amount of respect within the group on principal, no one liked him but no one was outright cruel to him. There were snide comments traded between him and Tony sure, but it wasn’t as if the comments weren’t well-deserved on both ends and Natasha and Bruce both seemed content to call them on their crap. Loki leaves him the living room and runs off with barely a comment tossed his way, as usual, leaving him to his own defenses.

“So you found us. I wondered if you would, you’re much more observant than people seem to give you credit for,” Natasha says.

He turns and finds the red head leaning against the door way to some other room, “you think?” he asks, raising an eyebrow. He should have expected it of the spy but he spent most of his time with spies and none of them seemed to look past his muscle mass and optimism no matter how many times he proved himself capable of actual thoughts.

“Of course. You remind me of Clint, constantly underestimated because of how you look, how you present yourself. Both of you are far more dangerous than you let on, follow me,” she says and walks away, fully expecting him to follow.

He does indeed follow because he’s curious to see what the red head had to offer, if anything, and what else she had to say. She leads him to another room, one with files in it, and picks up a folder, “the hammer found in Mexico, the file says you found it and that you had some sort of theory but it’s pretty much denounced as a footnote. ‘ _Odison thinks Asguardian relic,_ ’” she reads, “I’m curious as to what you thought,” she says.

He knew the case well, argued his point well too but he was dismissed. He thought that at least part of the reason he was denounced was because he was the only one who could lift the hammer out of those who had tried and his theory would have given him ‘special’ precedence over the other agents. He was certain they weren’t too fond of that idea because they didn’t care for the idea of him being ‘better’ than them. He wasn’t under the impression that being a good person was a zero sum, that because the hammer had deemed him worthy didn’t mean everyone else was inherently bad, just that the hammer found something about him in particular worthy. Those were two totally different things.

“I think, and this is just a theory, that the hammer is Asguardian but based in Norse mythology. Ever heard of Thor? The actual Thor, god of thunder, not me. I think Norse mythology is some bastardization of actual Asguardian people but to humans that kind of power is unheard of, unprecedented and so they thought the Asguardians were gods. Anyways the hammer, Mjolnir, belongs to actual Thor, I think, but I have no idea what it’s doing here, wait, is it actually here? In the building? If so how did you manage to get it here?” he asks, frowning. Even if they did make it through S.H.I.E.L.D, HYDRA, security only the worthy could lift the hammer, “which one of you was worthy?” he asks.

Natasha smiles, “we outsourced but I’m worthy, now what do you know about the obelisk?” she asks.

“Outsourced?” he asks.

Natasha smiles wider, “and wouldn’t you like to know exactly what I meant by that. The obelisk?” she asks sweetly.

*

“Look Tony, it’s a simple reconnaissance mission, all you have to do is walk in, get the file, and walk out. Simples,” Natasha says but when she says things in a way that was drastically underwhelming, well, the last time that happened there were a lot of exploding things.

“If it’s so simple why don’t you do it, you’re the trained spy,” he points out, suspicious of what she had in mind.

Natasha gives him looks but indulges him in an explanation, “if you get busted you can be useful, you have public sway, people like you. That makes them a lot more likely to try and capitalize on that in a way the rest of us don’t get the luxury of because we don’t technically exist,” she says, at least being honest even if it was bluntly so.

“So you chose me because people will care if I turn up dead somewhere,” he says, not bothering to sugar coat it.

“No, not exactly. If you get kidnapped we’ll all know right away if your body resurfaces and if not, well, we can infer that HYDRA is keeping you somewhere and we can get you out. It’ll be easier to predict whether you’re alive or not, so, simple reconnaissance mission, you ready?” she asks.

Tony sighs, “you sure know how to inspire confidence in a guy,” he mumbles. Simple mission his ass.

“All you have to do is walk down a hallway, get the file, and walk back out,” she reiterates, “a dog could do it, Clint’s chicken nuggets could do it. You’ll do fine, now, earpiece,” she says and hands him the device/

“What exactly am I getting?” he asks because he’d rather know what he was risking his life for, thanks.

“I found some information on the Red Room and the experiments they did there; I also have reason to believe there is information on Wanda and her brother too. That could be useful,” she says. Read: she and Wanda wanted to know what the hell HYDRA did to them and really, he couldn’t blame them really, He’d want to know too, and Nat wouldn’t send him in if she wasn’t confident he’d get out relatively unscathed. He trusted that he wasn’t going to die because Nat wanted some information about herself.

“Guess at least HYDRA seems to know that computers are a bad way of keeping information secrets secret. So filing cabinets it is, you do know how to find files right, please tell me Pepper didn’t do all of that for you,” she teases.

He snorts, “oh Pep did all the filing but that was for her sanity because I just stuff things where they fit and Pep is a stickler for alphabetical order. But I know my way around a filing cabinet; all my designs go in one after all. Computers are hackable, paper? Not so much.” His designs were far too precious, and usually dangerous, to risk someone getting their hands on them whether or not he thought his system was uncrackable.

Natasha grips his shoulder, “you’ll be fine, Tony. Clint will be a few blocks away taking out security so you won’t be alone.” If it wasn’t for his intimate knowledge of Clint’s impressive abilities he wouldn’t have been comforted by that at all, but he once watched the guy defuse a bomb by shooting an arrow into a window that was only open an inch from seven blocks away to cut the proper wire. He was in good hands, freakishly good and surprisingly human hands.

“Guess I better hurry up and not die then,” he says and takes a deep breath. He really _really_ hoped nothing went horribly wrong.

*

HYDRA had some information they wanted, well, a lot of information they wanted and if there was anything they were all good at it was getting information. The only problem was that HYDRA was stuck in the fucking stone ages and kept all the really important records on paper. It was smart but also a pain in his ass because now he had to break into the damn facility instead of just hacking a computer or something. On the plus side he had found May, Bobbi, and Hunter and even better was that they were all willing to help. “Look Coulson,” May says, interrupting his silence via earpiece, “just get in, get the files, and get out,” she tells him. They were, hopefully, going to get all the files on the people in the sandbox and hopefully prevent a HYDRA break in, or at least cut one off if they could.

“I know how this works May, we’ve done this a million times,” he reminds her. So it was a slight exaggeration, but they had certainly been on hundreds of missions just like this before, maybe more, they all knew the drill.

The room he ends up in is large and filled wall-to-wall with filing cabinets. He sighs and gets to work, trying to find the _right_ cabinet so he could get the hell out. Across the room the other entrance to the large filing dump opens and he draws his gun quickly, earning a squeak from the person who just walked through. Tony jumps and puts his hands up for about two seconds before he realizes who it was and snorts, “oh, you,” he says and completely dismisses him in favor of going to dig through some other filing cabinet.

“For all you know I could be HYDRA,” he says, shocked that Stark would dismiss him so fast. That was… that was just careless. And stupid. And a lot of other things he hoped Clint did not do on a regular basis.

“You took out an entire precinct of cops to get some of your Captain America shit back, if you wanted to hurt any of us you had the skills and the motivation but you didn’t bother acting on it, ergo you have no intention of hurting me,” Tony says and makes a pleased noise, pulling a file from the cabinet he was digging through.

The logic was good, but it was still reckless to completely ignore a potential threat in his opinion. But this was Tony Stark, reckless and stupid were kind of par for the course. “How’s Clint?” he asks, “is he around here somewhere? He feels closer,” he mumbles, mostly to himself rather than Tony.

This catches Tony’s attention because his head snaps up and he whirls around, “what the hell is that supposed to mean, Clint feels closer?” he asks, eyeing him with a whole new level of suspicion that wasn’t there ten seconds ago.

“I mean that… well actually I’m kind of confused, you said you had a way to dissolve the bond but you didn’t bother before you all took off? Seems a bit careless to me, none of you are what I really expected,” he says because there was no way they could operate under the radar if they were that sloppy.

“We _did_ dissolve the fucking bond, we aren’t _that_ stupid… oh shut up Nat, I’m not that dumb. How long has the bond been back?” he asks, eyeing him wearily.

He frowns, “back? The bond never left, was it supposed to?” Tony lets out a string of swear words and May yells at him to hurry up. “Shit, right,” he says into the ear piece he was wearing, “get ready for a large file transfer,” he tells them.

“Oh, you found a computer?” Bobbi asks excitedly.

“Ehhh,” he says and turns to Tony, “are you done, because I’m about to make a racket and you’re going to want to run,” he tells him.

Tony swears and starts rummaging through another filing cabinet, pulling a few files before noticing something else and grabbing some stuff out of that too, frowning at a folder that he recognized as one of the 084 folders. “I’d suggest you run, Stark,” he says and shifts the filing cabinet in front of him until it’s in front of a window.

“Are you sending that file or what?” Bobbi asks.

“Incoming,” he says and kicks the filing cabinet, sending it through the window to the ground. Behind him Tony swears and takes off through the door he had come in, making plenty of noise himself.

“This is not what I thought you had in mind when you said ‘large file transfer,’” Bobbi says, sighing because this was fairly par for the course with him. She missed it even if she’d never admit it, at least out loud. He goes out the window after the cabinet, though in a much less dramatic way as Bobbi and Hunter run out to collect the fallen file holder.

*

So Nat may have been right about the mission being simple, plus he found some weird file on _Skye_ of all people so there was that. She had been hacking into various government systems trying to find out what happened to her parents, who supposedly worked for the government, and had always come up empty so she would probably be rather happy about this development. He was almost to the door when HYDRA agents decide that particular hallway was the one they were going to flood, probably going after Coulson because he thought it was a good idea to _kick a filing cabinet out a window_. And people said he was dramatic.

He quickly turns down a random hallway and hopes to hell Nat knew of some other exit, “where the hell are you going?” Nat snaps into his ear. Which, rude.

“The hell away from the HYDRA agents,” he hisses, “where the hell am I going?” He turns down another random hallway to miss a few more straggling agents and this mission suddenly got a whole lot less simple. Fucking Coulson. “And while you’re at it ask Clint why the fuck he didn’t mention the bond was still there.”

Natasha lets out a long sigh and tells him to turn left, “I did ask. Turns out he thought that it was a craving for tacos,” she says. Tony squints at the nearest object, which happened to be an abandoned vacuum, and shakes his head. Only Clint could find it possible mistake a connection to another person’s thoughts and feelings for a craving for _tacos_. Clint Barton everyone. Nat gives him instructions to take the next right when something in that particular hallway blows up. He spins around and starts going in the opposite direction because _nope_ , he was not going to die today.

“Where the fuck are you going?” Natasha snaps again.

“The hell away from whatever just blew up,” he says and casts a somewhat panicky look behind him, “I told you I should have just flown in with the suit, if I had we wouldn’t be having this problem,” he hisses at her. Point one for him, zero for Nat.

“The goal was to be inconspicuous, and need I remind you that you would have been fine if it wasn’t for Coulson,” she says, “go left,” she tells him. He gets to the hallway and finds it flooded with HYDRA agents and keeps going, earning a swear from Natasha.

“It isn’t my fault they’re suddenly everywhere, are there some vents I could go through or something?” he asks.

Natasha makes an irritated noise and then sighs, “fine, that might be a better option at this point anyways, third hallway to the left,” she tells him. He follows her instructions and doesn’t run into to many more HYDRA agents, thankfully, and he manages to make it into a vent.

Unfortunately that lasts like five seconds before something else blows up and nearly rattles him out, which would have been fine if he had been able to crawl away undetected but no, he crawls straight into one Bucky, who looks rather surprised to see him there.

“Ugh,” they say in sync before Bucky decides to take over, “follow me,” he tells Tony and starts crawling away.

Tony snorts and starts crawling in the other direction, the way Nat had told him to go, but this plan is quickly blown up, literally, and ne narrowly avoids having his newly grown face hair singed off his face. At this rate he was going to end up with more hearing damage than Clint, though in Clint’s defense he was born hard of hearing. He quickly crawls backwards, ignoring Nat squawking in his ear, or at least that’s what it sounded like but maybe his hears were still ringing from being so close to the explosion. He manages to turn himself around to go with the only vent option he had left and finds Bucky waiting for him for some reason so he sighs and follows the irritated alpha through the vents.

“Where the hell are you going now?” Nat snaps and there we go, his hearing was on its way back, great.

“I’m following Bucky,” he tells her.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” she asks, irritated with his bad life choices. That made two of them.

“Well considering I almost got blown up again two minutes ago it was better than the alternative,” he says and follows Bucky around a corner.

“You have no idea where he’s leading you,” she says.

“I didn’t know where you were leading me either,” Tony points out, stupidly not thinking that statement through.

“ _I_ have your best interest in mind, thanks,” she snaps, “who the hell knows what he has in mind.”

So she was kind of right, but he hadn’t run into any explosions or HYDRA agents following Bucky. He knew that was nothing more than coincidence but still, he wasn’t fond of the idea of dying and Bucky was doing a good job of promoting his life so far. Of course as soon as he thought that something explodes behind them, fucking with the vents and sending him and Bucky sliding out and onto the floor in a heap. “For fucks sakes,” he mumbles and shoves Bucky off of him.

“There, this way!” someone down the hallway yells and Tony can hear footsteps coming closer. Well shit.

He picks himself up and runs off, Bucky following behind him and Nat suspiciously silent in his ear. There seemed to be a juncture of hallways up ahead which would be great if he knew where the fuck he was going, “got any bright ideas?” he yells behind him at Bucky.

“Go left up ahead,” Bucky says. Nat still remains silent even though she undoubtedly heard that, probably punishing him for being a moron and doubting her over Bucky. He didn’t really blame her.

They get to the end of the hallway just as the dust from the explosion starts to settle and Tony, mercifully, spies a janitor’s closet. He quickly opens the door as Bucky skids to a halt, looking at him like he’s stupid, “you can’t possibly be that short of cleaning supplies,” he says, deadpan.  

Tony rolls his eyes and starts mixing products quickly in the nearest container before sending it down the hallway the HYDRA agents were currently making quick work of. “I’m not short of cleaning supplies, I’m short on time, I just made a bunch of chlorine gas,” he snaps and starts running, Bucky behind him.

“Go left, now Tony!” Nat yells at him and he skids into the hallway, barely managing to not hit a wall before Nat’s telling him to take the next right. He thinks the purpose was to lose Bucky as much as it was to get him out and this is why she should have just gone herself, he didn’t do well with the whole espionage thing. He was more the ‘show up and fuck HYDRA up’ type, not ‘be all sneaky and get out without anyone ever knowing you were there’ type. Plus he had no suit, he didn’t know how to fight, he was essentially powerless and Bucky would have made a great ‘sacrifice him to HYDRA and run’ target but no, now he was on his own.

“What the hell was that, Tony?” Natasha yells at him.

“That was me being really bad at this just like I told you I would be!” he yells back, following Nat’s instruction to go down the next hallway. “Besides, it wasn’t like I had an array of options Nat, the way you told me to go was a wee bit fried and Bucky was going down the only other vent there, how’s that my fault?” he points out.

“That isn’t the point,” she snaps, “you were more willing to trust some random alpha than me, why?” she asks, sounding hurt.

“No offense Nat, but at that point your instructions had a one hundred percent fail rate, you’re the one who keeps telling me I need to use the resources around me rather than relying on my suit and now you’re complaining about it,” he says.

“That isn’t relying on the resources around you, that’s just stupidity!” she snaps, “use your head, Stark, you’re a genius, act like one!”

“Well it was either that or fall out of the hole blown in the vent Nat, given my limited options I think I did pretty well,” he snaps, growing irritated with this. They all _knew_ he wasn’t good at this and he had no idea why everyone kept trying to make him good at it. Clint should have gone, he would have done fine and he could have had a make out session with Coulson.

Natasha tells him there is a door up ahead and he runs towards it, nearly colliding with some random HYDRA agent with a gun. “Oh fuck you,” he snarls, grabbing the gun and pointing away from him, moving to the side and twisting the fire arm and the owner’s wrist, causing him to loosen the grip on the gun and drop it. He promptly punches the guy in the face and runs off.

“Yes, exactly, this is what you should have been doing the whole time, that was fantastic!” Natasha tells him, “I knew you had it in you!”

“The only reason I managed that is because I’m so fucking pissed off and frustrated I had no room to panic over maybe getting shot, thanks, I do _not_ have any sort of spy potential,” he snaps at her, managing to get to the door and pull it open. “Thank fucking god,” he mumbles, taking a deep breath before preparing to run off to find Clint.

Of course that’s when some asshole manages to hit him over the head with something.                                                                                 


	8. Escape

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have a chapter that may or may not make any sense...

Tony was plenty used to being mistreated, he had spent three months in caves with a group of jackass terrorists, half his life with his father, the rest with Obi. If HYDRA thought they were going to get anything useful out of him they were sorely mistaken but that didn’t stop them from trying to beat the answers to their questions out of him, and then inexplicably try to be nice after that. He wasn’t much willing to talk _before_ he got his nose broken let alone after, offer of food or not. Deciding it was a good idea to stick him with a needle hadn’t exactly been the best of plans either; he hated needles and if he hadn’t been inclined to talk before he was even less inclined now. HYDRA seems to either figure this ‘interrogation’ wasn’t working or they had some sort of backup plan because they toss him in a cell shortly after needling him.

“That was lovely guys, let’s do it again sometime!” he yells sarcastically after the agents that tossed him into some sort of cell with a glass wall. Great, now he was going to feel like a bug under observation.

“What’d they want from you?” someone else asks and he turns to find Steve of all people slumped in the far corner of the cell.

“How the hell did I not notice you right away?” he asks, mostly to himself because he didn’t care what Steve thought.

“You appear to be shockingly single minded, completely incapable of multitasking unless it helps you achieve your goal,” he says, earning a dubious look from Tony. “Bucky spent some time with you in the lab, very telling, which is odd considering how suspicious you are. We concluded that you are a paradox that makes no sense,” Steve tells him.

“I was making a weapon and my susceptibility to Commands is incredibly low, plus JARVIS was watching, don’t underestimate JARVIS,” he says.

Steve frowns, “your creepy robot?” he asks.

“AI, he’s not creepy, but yes,” Tony says, giving Steve and irritated look. JARVIS was _not_ creepy, he was JARVIS.

“How low is low?” Steve asks, eyeing Tony wearily.

“Low enough to resist you if that’s what you’re asking,” Tony says. He wipes sweat off his forehead and frowns, why was he so damn hot? “God, turn down the temperature in here, what do you people think you’re going to do? Get your answers out of my by giving me heat stroke?” he asks. Idiots.

“Tony the temperature of the room is fine; it’s your core temperature that’s rising,” Steve says, “I think they expect _me_ to get the answers out of you.”

Tony whips around to look at Steve and then back out the glass wall, “I am so fucked,” he snaps. He _told_ Nat he couldn’t do this and now he was stuck in a room with an alpha with control issues halfassed in a heat that was probably going to be strong enough to kill him. Well fuck. So much for doing Skye a favor finding that info on her, whatever it meant, or any of the stuff he found on Nat and Wanda.

“Relax, Tony,” Steve mumbles, “I’ve never had that kind of control issue,” he says.

Tony snorts, “yeah, trust the guy who speaks almost entirely in Commands and can’t control it unless he has a black eye apparently,” because Steve had managed to keep his Commands to himself thus far, “to control himself. Yeah okay, sounds like a perfectly reasonable thing to do,” he says, heavy on the sarcasm.

Steve sighs, “my control issues only seem to affect the Commands, and there’s a reason,” he says, giving Tony a hard look.

Tony snorts, “yeah okay. Not interested in whatever excuses you have at the ready.” He was fairly certain Steve said something after that but he was already focusing on the seams of the walls around him, trying to figure out a way to get out of this damn cell.

*

Natasha felt horrible. It wasn’t that none of them got hurt before, but Tony was right, he wasn’t cut out for this kind of work and she knew it, everyone knew it. The guy was a subtle as a whale in a pool, couldn’t think two feet in front of himself, and his skills were next to useless in the field. Unless, of course, he was in the suit, then he was reckless, stupid, and… and well, good at strategy, much more clear headed, more confident in his abilities. Tony was at home in his tech, literally in the case of the suit, and it showed when he was in the field. But no, she had ignored him, stupidly, and now he was kidnapped because of her mistake. And then there was Clint.

Good damn Clint. Coulson had managed to find him via the damn bond, unsurprising, and she hadn’t had much choice but to take him in given his for-some-reason-still-existent bond with Clint. They went to a different location, of course, she wasn’t stupid enough to put all her eggs in one basket, and they needed to get rid of that damn bond for their safety. And Clint thought it was _tacos_.

At least Coulson was just as upset about that development. “I genuinely care about you and you thought my feelings were a craving for _tacos_?” he asks, looking downright offended by Clint’s apparent lack of common sense.

“I genuinely care about tacos,” Clint says, shrugging. Coulson, to his credit, doesn’t give Clint too hard of a glare for that, mostly just a look of intense confusion. None of them understood Clint’s love for food either, especially not when he decided that he was going to eat some left over sandwich someone left behind, potential to be shot by whomever was attacking be damned. Not to mention he had no idea who might have slobbered on that thing, but Clint was a lover of all things edible and that love knew no bounds. Apparently so much so that another person’s feelings, supposedly genuine feelings, could pass off as a food craving. Fucking Clint Barton, she loved the bastard, but she was going to kick his ass.

“I can’t believe you mistook my feelings for a _food craving_. Seriously, Clint?” he asks, shaking his head.

Clint looks one hundred percent unapologetic, “tacos don’t bite me. I bite tacos. I prefer to do the biting,” he says.

Coulson shrugs, “never really understood the appeal,” he says, “seems a bit violent for me.”

Fitzsimmons and Bruce squint at him, “that is so redundant,” Bruce says after a few minutes of confused silence.

“Not when you consider he bit me in the middle of a fight,” Clint points out, “also consensual bites that don’t happen in the middle of a fight with a neo-Nazi organization are very pleasant,” he says.

Natasha rolls her eyes, “Clint shut up and let Fitzsimmons take a look at you so we can throw Coulson back out on the lawn,” she says, gesturing for the two of them to go do testing or something. Hopefully they could figure out why the bond hadn’t broken and then break the damn thing. In the mean time she had to find Tony and remove him from where ever he was ASAP. Tony wasn’t built for capture and she had to find him before he broke out and stashed himself somewhere where she couldn’t find him. And knowing Tony his dumb ass would forget to make contact. The guy was a genius and a moron all at once.

Bruce finds her relatively quickly after she shoos Clint and Coulson from the room, “you know it won’t be hard to find Tony,” he says.

She sighs, “unless he blows up wherever he is I doubt that,” she says. It wasn’t like HYDRA didn’t know what they were doing, there was a reason they’ve functioned under the radar for so long without detection.

Bruce smiles, “Nat, Tony’s a tech genius, you know he doesn’t go anywhere without _something_ and he isn’t fond of being held by terrorists, I can guarantee he has some way for you to find him on him. JARVIS has been suspiciously quiet since finding out Tony went missing, ask him,” Bruce suggests.

Natasha nods, not having thought of that, and she immediately runs off to Tony’s room and a sure connection to JARVIS. “Hey, wake up and stop fucking around JARVIS,” she says to the walls, feeling rather weird doing so. Tony always talked to JARVIS without any reservations, content talking to the tech no matter how odd he looked talking to the space around him. She needed to find him damnit, she has become attached and she didn’t want to see Tony drop dead. Especially because it would be her fault.

“I have compiled all relevant information for you and emailed it,” JARVIS informs her, “also it appears Tony’s core temperature it rising at a rapid rate. If I didn’t know any better I’d say he was going into heat.”

She swears loudly and pulls out her phone, checking her email while she instructs JARVIS to gather Bruce, Wanda, and Loki. The three of them plus her should be able to execute a breakout on the fly with relative ease and Bruce was only the backup plan.

*

“So ugh, what’s your favorite color,” Steve asks after sitting in silence for nearly thirty minutes. If he could find a way out he couldn’t now, he was way over heated and extremely pissed off. And Steve, he didn’t even look phased by his scent, which smelled appealing to him so he knew Steve must have found it pleasant. It was simultaneously creepy and reassuring.

“Red,” he mumbles, “you?”

“Everyone thinks I like blue because I wear a lot of it but I kind of like pink, I think it looks nice on me but I can’t actually find anything in the shades of pink I like,” he says.

“Boring,” Tony says, turning back to the glass panel to glare out of it.

“Really? Most people think that’s unexpected, a guy liking pink, I mean its dumb people think that but they do,” Steve says.

“I literally have no effort to question stupid gender roles right now, I just don’t like pink. Pink is red but lame,” he says.

“Eloquent,” Steve mumbles, giving Tony irritated looks. “Cat person or dog person?” he asks a few minutes later.

“Cat,” Tony says, “less maintenance, and cats and I have a deep understanding in which everyone thinks we’re one way but really we’re another and only a few people see it. Also we both bite when irritated,” he says, shifting a little in an attempt to find comfort.

He can see Steve subtly sniff but his face doesn’t really change. Tony isn’t sure if that means he’s safe or in the eye of a storm but either way he wanted the fuck out of here. “I’m more of a dog person but I’ve never had the time to own one. I like pugs, and Pomeranians,” Steve says.

“Mmm, I like corgis,” Tony says. The dogs were very cute, and fluffy. He liked fluffy and cute, like cats. He liked cats.

“Corgis are adorable, Bucky and I used to have a corgi. His name was Bob and he was fat as hell but then he died,” Steve says sadly.

“Poor Bob,” Tony mumbles, not really paying attention to Steve’s words, getting to hot to pay attention to much of anything at all.

“Hey, Tony, stay awake. What do you like to do in your spare time?” Steve asks.

Tony makes an irritated noise, “build things. Everyone knows that,” he mumbles.

“Yeah, but like you have to be working on something new, what are you working on?” he asks.

Tony cracks one eye open to glare at him, “you can’t even use my secrets. You wouldn’t understand the suit, no one does. It’s impossible,” he says.

Steve frowns, “if it’s impossible why are you working on it?”

“Impossible for _other_ people,” he says, “but I’m smart.”

“How does it work?” Steve asks.

Loaded question, it would take so long to explain. Tony decides he doesn’t have the energy to explain all the technologies that he combined into a full-body suit of armor. The repulsor tech alone would take forever. “The things go with the things then they do the things,” he says in way of a real explanation.

“That tells me nothing Tony, that doesn’t even make sense. I think you might be over heating,” he says.

Tony makes a noise and passes out.

*

Rescue missions were not her thing, she was better at action, not reaction; this was more Tony’s thing. He was good at action too, but rescues were something he shined at, Clint too, though Clint mostly rescued himself and they found him wherever he ended up relaxing with food and Starbucks. “Are you sure we’ll be okay?” Wanda asks, raising an eyebrow.

Natasha shrugs, “worst come to worst we’ll just send Bruce in to fuck shit up and use that time to get Tony out of wherever he is,” she says, looking at Tony’s location on a map JARVIS sent over. She had to compare that with blueprints of the HYDRA building, one that had thankfully been in S.H.I.E.L.D databases. Bruce looks nervous about this potential hulking out but he remains silent about it. They didn’t use him often, being the hulk took its toll on Bruce’s mental health and none of them were willing to risk that if they could help it. But this was a medical emergency.

Bruce understood.

She was good, always had been, it was why they kept her. She was fucking ruthless and when she chose to she was a single minded force of destruction that no one in their right minds would want to cross. She was Black Widow and she was a legend people told stories about to their children at night or a reason. HYDRA really should have known that when they only sent a small team to try and take her out. She made quick work of them and walked on, not caring if Loki and Wanda were following. They could take care of themselves, Wanda was by no means helpless, and Loki would be returned within hours if someone was dumb enough to kidnap him.

She made quick work of the second team too, leaving a trail of HYDRA agents in her wake as she all but walked down the hallway. She’s almost to the end of the hallway when Bucky almost runs into her, glancing down the hallway, back to her, and back to the hallway again. “Holy shit,” he whispers, “you did this yourself?” he asks.

“And another small team a few hallways back, are you intent on joining them?” she asks sweetly, raising an eyebrow.

Bucky takes a step back, “fuck no, I’m just here for Steve,” he says. She decides to ignore him, sort of; she was paying attention to his footsteps, particularly when they started following behind her.

“And you are going where, exactly?” she asks. According to her maps she was only a few hallways and a left turn away from Tony.

“A few hallways ahead and to the left if that HYDRA agent I kicked the shit out of is to be believed,” he says and Nat stops for a second.

“Shit!” she yells and takes off running, Wanda, Loki, and Bucky all behind her.

“What! What did I miss?” Bucky asks.

“Oh fuck off,” Loki snarls and she hears skin on skin, presumably Loki picking a fight, and she hears a body that’s too heavy to be Loki hit the ground. Go Loki.

Bucky picks himself up quickly, still yelling about missing something and they all ignore him, having found the link Bucky apparently missed. They expect to walk in on a rather nasty scene but what they find instead is Tony, slumped against the wall half curled in on himself while Steve tries to keep him awake by asking him stupid questions across the cell. The guy didn’t even look phased and Tony smelled pleasant to Natasha and she by no means had any sort of attraction to Tony Stark. It was… unexpected when she knew he had control issues to say the least.

And Tony, he looked irritated with Steve’s antics and was trying to flip himself over so he was facing away from Steve and therefore telling him the conversation was over. The glass paneling of the front of the cell probably would have held her back a few minutes but Wanda pretty much vaporizes the wall and Loki beats them all into the room, moving at a speed Natasha had previously thought impossible for him.

He holds out his hands in front of Tony and they inexplicably start to grow ice over his fingers. Wanda is the first to react, “not too cold,” she says, “or you’ll shock his system,” she kneels next to Loki and waves her hand by his head, “do you mind?” she asks. Loki shrugs and Wanda waves her hand by his head, his eyes temporarily going red before settling back to their normal blue and the ice drops off his hands, presumably because Wanda was now controlling the temperature.

Steve, she noticed, picks his way along the edge of the room and exits the cell, promptly shoving Bucky out too. Bucky looks over his shoulder and Steve gives him another rough shove and then their gone.

Getting out was easy enough, easier than getting in, but them Wanda was happily tossing HYDRA agents at walls while Natasha and Loki made an awkward attempt to carry Tony while Loki tried to use some sort of ice power no one even knew he had ten minutes before to cool Tony down some.

Bruce meets them at the door, fidgeting with his sweater sleeves, obviously anxious, “it he okay?” he asks.

Natasha sighs, “mostly, thank god, and thankfully these people are more disorganized than we are at the moment otherwise this wouldn’t have been half as easy.” Bucky seemed to have provided an unintentional distraction having broken in when they had, and he was obviously capable given he didn’t look very bruised when she had come across him.

“Are you alright?” Bruce asks, touching her left cheek.

She leans away from his touch, “fine,” she says as she and Loki maneuver Tony into the back seat of the car they took. When she gets into the driver’s seat she looks at herself in the mirror and finds she has a pretty nasty cut along her cheek, and her eye was bruised though not badly. She didn’t even know when that happened.

HYDRA agents get their shit together long enough to take a couple shots at them as they leave but nothing comes of it and she’s pretty sure Wanda tosses them around too.   


	9. Deliberation

Fitzsimmons was excited over some science thing they had done with Clint and Coulson, “Fitzsimmons, you know I love you both, but I could care less about Clint and Coulson’s bonding brains, how do you unbond them?” Natasha asks, raising an eyebrow.

They exchange a worried look, “well,” Jemma says.

“We don’t,” Fitz finishes.

“Technically we could, but that would require killing one of them and even that would have a drastic effect on the other,” Jemma says, looking apologetic.

Natasha sighs and rubs her temples, “great. And since you’re still around I assume there’s more,” she says and gestures for them to continue. 

The two exchange a glance, “well… Phil would like to make contact with his team,” Jemma says and stops there.

Natasha raises an eyebrow, “and this matters to me because…?” Fitzsimmons exchanges a look, “the two of you can’t seriously think this is a good idea,” she tells them, looking back and forth between the two, “seriously?” she asks.

“We only have research on ourselves, it would be beneficial to have research on alphas,” Jemma says and she’s beginning to wonder if the two planned this out. They weren’t very good at it if so.

She rolls her eyes, “almost all research on A/B/O scores are done on alphas,” she says, “don’t tell me the research isn’t there,” she says, giving the two looks. They wilt, expectedly, and exchange looks like they both had more to add but weren’t intent on speaking against her. She really wished they wouldn’t do that, she’d listen, but that didn’t mean she’d agree.

“Actually it isn’t,” a voice says from behind her and she sighs.

“For gods sakes Tony, get back to bed, you shouldn’t be walking around,” she says, giving him a glare that would send Fitzsimmons running for the hills. Tony though, he doesn’t even flinch, he just senses a challenge and goes with it because that’s how he works no matter how much everyone else wished he didn’t.

“I’m fine, just a little warm, and honestly it isn’t even that bad now, Fitzsimmons knows what they’re doing,” he says, “now. Research, it’s all done by alphas, for alphas, reviewed by alphas, and published by more alphas-”

“Which is why the research is there-“

“No. It’s why the research isn’t, Nat. These people don’t ask the same questions we do; half the time they fabricate evidence to subjugate entire groups of people. I’m sure you’ve heard of that famous study that said that women, people of colour, and omegas were all lesser than white male alphas because of brain size, or more accurately a lack thereof. The entirety of nineteenth century psychiatry, guessing who’s a criminal or not based on skull bumps, blatant racism and misogyny. A lack or representation in research means a lack of representation of _what_ is researched. Fitzsimmons, I’m sure, has done their research and obviously the questions they have weren’t answered. Besides, they don’t seem to be particularly… dangerous,” he says, winching when he gets a particularly nasty look from her.

“I’ll talk to Clint,” she says and walks off.

*

Loki was being annoying, more so than usual, and he kept trying to make sure he stayed in bed but if there was one thing he loathed it was staying still. And no one would let him do anything in bed, so he had to get _out_ of bed to do things. What was that saying? Ain’t no rest for the wicked, yes, that was him. He was the wicked and he was not resting, he hated staying still and he was not going to do so. But Loki was not having any of this and he refused to leave Tony to be Tony. “Would you get back to bed, you’ve been through a traumatic experience,” he says, trying to shoo him back to bed.

He was not going though, no matter what everyone else thought he should do. He was his own man; he could do what he wanted. “I’m aware that dating you was a traumatic experience, but that was over months ago and I think I’m okay now, thanks,” he says, waving Loki off.

“Oh as if dating you was any less traumatic,” Loki says, “now get your ass back to bed.” Loki thinks he’s being authoritative, really, but Tony has never done well with authority and he wasn’t about to start because Loki wanted him to.  

“No, I will do things, I don’t know what things but the things will be done,” he says, waving Loki off so he can go elsewhere to waste his time. Loki is not so easily persuaded though and he blocks Tony’s path, hands on his hips and irritated look on his face. They do this for a few more minutes, try to out run or capture one another before Tony gives up and heads back towards his bedroom, mostly because Fitzsimmons’ lab was on the way and he had every intention of ducking into it so he could do things. Loki thinks he’s won though and that was all that mattered to him, it would let his guard down and he could flee in peace.

When he gets to the lab and ducks in Loki doesn’t react fast enough to catch him and he locks the door immediately and hits a few buttons on the key pad, overriding Loki’s security codes and therefore locking him out completely. Loki looks pissed but he grins and runs off, figuring he only had a limited time before Natasha comes to get him and throw him back in bed, probably literally. His limited time, it turned out, was way more limited than he thought because god damn Nat was in the lab talking to Clint, who was outlining everything he’d felt in Coulson’s head thus far.

“Are you really gunna take the word of the guy who thought another person in his head was a taco craving?” he asks Nat because come on, even he wasn’t _that_ dumb and he was pretty dumb.

She gives him the _look_ , the one that meant ‘shut up now or suffer the consequences’ and he decides to cut his losses and stop questioning her. Besides, she was kind of the authority on this kind of thing anyways, he was better with the ‘blow shit up and get people un-kidnapped’ thing. Not that she wasn’t good at that too, she was, she was kind of like a jack-of-all-trades and she was a master at most. Nat continues to question Clint and he wanders off to find Fitzsimmons, who happened to be in the office section of their lab observing Clint and Nat, “do you think she’ll say yes?” they ask him excitedly.

He shrugs, “who knows? I mean realistically Coulson could have at least attempted to take us out and considering he managed to take out an entire precinct of armed cops with a bag of flower and a whole lot of determination a good portion of us would have went down. That isn’t really considering Steve or Bucky and the two are no doubt just as well trained as Coulson is and neither of them tried anything. Bucky helped me out the last time we ran into each other, seems pretty obvious to me that they don’t have much intent to fuck us over or otherwise harm us but I’m not a spy, I don’t see what Nat and Clint see.”

“Well we hope she says yes because we have about a million questions and all that research done on alphas has done nothing to answer them. I can’t believe nearly two centuries of scientific studies has turned up nothing useful, we basically had to throw out the first century because it was so offensive it couldn’t possibly hold any scientific value,” Fitz says, looking generally uncomfortable.

“But you should see this,” Jemma says, beckoning him to follow her further into the office to the computers, “look at this,” she says and plays back some brain scans she must have done, presumably on Clint and Coulson.

He frowns, “are their brains… interacting with one another?” he asks.

Jemma nods, “we were asking them questions about each other and they automatically mentally reached out to the other person, and they both let each other. You remember shortly after we found you and we ran those scans on you, well we still have them around and upon comparison you’re brains reacted completely differently to the bond. When you were given a Command, or at least we presume you were considering we didn’t have access to the alpha that had given the Command, the structures in your brain that lit up signified aggression. You fought back, but these two don’t seem to feel the need to fight one another off, we think this is why the bond didn’t break, on some level these two have a bond based off trust though we don’t think either one of them knows this. We need more brains for comparison.”    

Tony shakes his head, only Fitzsimmons would be so excited about brains of all things. “That kind of looks like the scans you guys took of Wanda making mental connections with us, actually,” he says.

Fitz smiles, “funny you mention that,” he says, “because we thought the same thing, except the scan only seems to resemble the one of Wanda and Clint, which is unsurprising because those two in particular have the closest bond. That’s what gave us the idea of mutual trust, though we aren’t really sure what that trust is built off of,” he says.

“Huh, that’s interesting.” He wasn’t overly fond of the idea of having a bunch of alphas lingering around but he did want some answers. Lesser of two evils, he supposed.

“Well I’m sure you have about a million and one questions,” Jemma says and hands him a notebook, “write them down.”

*

Clint had life ambitions, okay; he was definitely going to eat a lot of tacos. And pizza, probably a lot of pasta, he was kind of going for world’s most unhealthy diet. Point was he was most definitely not going to end up bonded to some random alpha who was probably so vanilla he made vanilla ice cream look exotic. “Seriously, just answer the question,” Clint says, poking Coulson in the side.

Coulson bats his hand away, “I am not telling you about my sexual experiences, and it’s creepy that you asked, you wouldn’t tell me about-”

“Oh hell yeah I would, we can start with Natasha,” he says and as if she heard him, which she couldn’t have because she was across a busy room, she turns to glare him down. “Never mind, we can start with that threesome with Loki and Tony, which, much more pleasant than I thought it would be.”

Coulson looks down right scandalized, “ _what_?” he asks, eyes bugging.

“I am so right, you’re totally vanilla!” Clint says, grinning gleefully, clapping.

“I… you… my sex life in none of your business,” Coulson says, looking anywhere but at Clint.

“Oh it so is if we’re going to be bonded for life, don’t look at me like that, I get flashes of what you’re doing every time your emotions are running high so if you ever have sex again I will be in the know whether or not I’m the other party in the sexual encounter, sorry,” Clint says, not sounding sorry whatsoever.

“You will keep yourself out of my potential sex life, and I will do the same for you,” Coulson says primly, flattening his already flat tie.

“That is what you get when you bite strangers; you end up bonded to someone who is going to make it their life’s mission to make you as deeply uncomfortable with their sex life as possible. And my diet, don’t think I can’t feel your disgust at my pizza, which I take personal offense to by the way. You’re just going to have to deal with me,” he says, grinning at Coulson.

And Coulson, the sorry sucker, looks so upset with this development, “why the hell did I bite you?” he grumbles, giving Clint upset looks.

“You love me,” Clint says and Coulson snorts.

“You must be using that word very loosely, and don’t tell me you’re not, because you regularly tell pasta that you love it,” he says. Clint can feel the confusion there, Coulson, like pretty much everyone else in his life, didn’t understand his love of all things edible. Well, most things edible.

“I do love pasta, it’s my favorite thing next to sleeping and sandwiches,” he says, “you’re just going to have to deal with it because it’s just who I am.”

Coulson frowns, “Clint you aren’t sandwiches and pasta, you’re love, and protection, and sweetness, and-”

“And I’m leaving before you confess that you actually love me,” Clint says and runs off before Coulson decides it’s a good idea to say something stupid that he can’t take back.  

Natasha knows he’s coming before he gets there, as always, “what did he say?” she asks without looking up. She always knew, it was kind of creepy, but he had grown considerably used to it over the years and her creepy knowledge of all was useful when he needed advice.

“First of all you’re ability to know all, very disturbing, and he said I was sweet,” he tells her, awkwardly shifting some papers around.

Natasha gives him a look but when he doesn’t expand on that she rolls her eyes, “so what? You’re having a mental freak out because Coulson said you were sweet?”

Okay so when she put it like that it sounded stupid, “it wasn’t _what_ he said, it was _how_ he said it. I don’t do commitment, Nat, and unless he spontaneously turns into a pizza I will not love him unconditionally.”

“You don’t love pizza unconditionally; if it has pineapples or anchovies you won’t eat it. And calling you sweet no matter how he said it is hardly a proposal Clint, it’s the truth, stop focusing on every move Coulson makes as if he makes it specifically as some sort of clue to you about how he feels, we both know how irresponsible and ridiculous that is. So have you managed to gather the information?” she asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Coulson trusts his team almost completely, he has enough skepticism to not be a moron, but he seems to think that they’re all trustable people. Plus he thinks this would be a convenient hiding place from HYDRA,” Clint tells her. Coulson hadn’t even put up a fight when he picked his brain; he had no clue how to be subtle about it, and even offered up some memories to demonstrate his point. Clint had ignored those and focused on the things Coulson found suspicious about his team. Bobbi and Hunter always fighting, Mack’s apparent inability to connect with anyone around him, Steve and Bucky being far more loyal to each other than anyone else, some mission that had made May cold to all, his missing Ward being HYDRA for so long. He didn’t seem to identify anything particularly off about Peggy but he wondered about her relationship with Steve, and therefore to Bucky, and not knowing irritated him.

“And what do you think?” she asks, tilting her head to the side.

“I think Bobbi and Hunter are too wrapped up in their own drama to cause much with us, Steve and Bucky are heavily associated with the word ‘experiment’ and Coulson didn’t seem fond of letting me know why but I think that’s more for their privacy. Mack just doesn’t like anyone so he doesn’t bother to connect, May is only dangerous when motivated, Peggy has a weird relationship to Steve and kind of Bucky but that doesn’t seem to be a problem. In short I don’t think they’d have much motivation to do any harm and even if they did they don’t have literal superpowers. Well, there’s the questionability of Steve and Bucky, but Wanda alone could fuck us all over with just a few thoughts, then there’s Skye, Tony’s suit, Loki’s apparent ice powers, Thor would never let anyone hurt Loki and frankly their relationship is _weird_. Fitzsimmons could science their way out of a tight situation, we’ve been through worse,” he shrugs.

“So you don’t think this is a bad idea?” she asks.

“Nah, this is a horrible idea, but the extra bodies make great ‘sacrifice em’ to HYDRA and run’ type deals, we could always use disposable people,” he says. He can feel Coulson’s vast offense to that but he can also sense that Coulson knows he’s being practical. Besides, it wasn’t like they didn’t know how to deal with being caught by the wrong organization, it happened all the damn time. They’d help out if they were motivated to do so.

“And Coulson? How’s he?” she asks.

Clint sighs, “fine I guess, we get along well, really well actually. He doesn’t get my love for food but no one does, and I don’t get his love for suits. Like seriously, why so stuffy? But he god damn loves those suits, oh, and we both love animals. Which is good because I don’t trust people who don’t love animals, it just isn’t natural to love the cute and furry,” he says.

Natasha rolls her eyes, “you trust Tony and he’s a cat person.”

“But he _likes_ dogs; he just doesn’t want to own one. That’s different,” he says.

Nat looks over at Fitzsimmons, who were crowded around a tablet with what was bound to be some sort of science on it, “you’d think they’d be excited about Loki, not a bunch of alphas. It’s weird and unusual,” she says, wrinkling her nose.

“Would you want to spend an abundance of time with Loki in a lab?” he asks, making a face at the thought.

Natasha shrugs, “well I suppose you have a point there, only Tony ever really could stand to be around the guy for more than ten seconds and I swear that’s only because Tony likes a challenge.”


	10. House Guests

It turned out Coulson’s team was pretty awesome, and everyone seemed to know one Sam Wilson in same rather intimate ways. Natasha, it turned out, had run a mission with him once and trusted him implicitly and Tony had made Sam the wings he was so famous for and that had required working closely with him so Tony trusted him too. Everyone else, well, Tony was still trying to figure out whom, exactly, Sam had slept with because seriously, he got around more than Tony and he had thought that impossible two days before. He finds Lance, though everyone else seemed to prefer referring to him by his last name, “you, yes, you. Have you slept with Sam too, I’m asking for science,” he says, poised with a notebook at the ready.

Lance turns around, “huh? Oh, you’re trying to figure out who he’s slept with too?” he asks excitedly, “finally, someone where who doesn’t look like they want to murder us all. Right, okay, so from what I’ve gather Sam appears to have fucked his way through most of my group but a few haven’t been all that forthcoming, I haven’t been able to crack May, you?” he asks, apparently trying to avoid the question or forgetting Tony asked.

“Oh he’s been through most of mine too, including Nat and I always thought she was ace,” he says. Natasha, and Bruce for that matter, never seemed to indicate feeling any sort of sexual attraction and made faces when everyone else mentioned their sexual experiences so he’d made the logical leap.

Lance raises an eyebrow, “the red head that looks like she could kill you with her eyes? Brave man,” he says, “but then if anyone could manage being with a girl like that and get out the other side unscathed its Sam. The guy is like… freakishly likable, and freakishly trustable, even Bobbi trusts him and Bobbi doesn’t trust anyone. But yeah, back on track, watch out for Sam, you think you aren’t even interested in guys and bam, it’s the next day and all you know is that Sam Wilson is the best lay you’ve had in years and you are very, very confused about your sexuality,” he tells Tony and gives Sam looks across the room. Right now he was charming Fitzsimmons, who both looked enthralled with Sam’s words, whatever they were, and Tony couldn’t blame them really. Sam had a nice voice; also Sam had a really nice personality.

“Lucky for me I had the sexuality thing figured out already, it was the alpha thing that threw me off, I’ve never been fond,” he says, wrinkling his nose. He hadn’t been surprised that Coulson’s team was comprised mostly of alphas, aside from Lance, who was an omega but he hadn’t been a S.H.I.E.L.D agent, from what he understood Lance was more assassin for hire. He had been brought in because Coulson had thought maybe Lance knew something about Clint, which he hadn’t, but the two got along quite well.

Lance wrinkles his nose too, “right? They’re always so bossy, throwing their Commands around and expecting us all to follow mindlessly. But they’re also hot and really, you can’t pass that up,” he says and looks at Bobbi. Tony got the distinct impression that Bobbi meant way more than looks to Lance but what the hell did he know, he didn’t do well with the people thing.

“Hmm, I’ve always preferred betas, all the hotness, none of the Commands, and you don’t have to worry about two heats. God, sweating your ass off for at least three days while hoping to die of dehydration sucks,” he says.

“True,” Lance says, “and I don’t get that ‘alphas help’ thing with heats, all Bobbi did to help was make me feel less like tossing myself out the nearest window. The cuddles were nice though.”

“That’s actually something of a myth, the sex thing attached to heats actually comes from a time when literally everyone who wasn’t an alpha used omegas as, well, to be blunt, sex slaves during heats to reproduce. Heats, biologically and evolutionarily speaking, are actually designed to release hormones in the brain that promote bonding, which is designed to create healthy relationships, which then, in theory, leads to procreation. Heats equal sex equal procreation is actually based in cultural construction, not scientific fact,” he says. And he’s done his research, _someone_ had to set all the irritating alphas blabbing around the office right and what the hell were they going to do to him? He was far more powerful than any of them in every way and so he figured he was in a good position to tell them to fuck off with little risk to himself.

“Well you learn something new every day. Do you think Sam has a secret super power that makes people bond to him and that’s how he manages to sleep with literally everyone?” Lance asks.

“I’ll put that into the list of questions we have because seriously, _Nat_.”

*

They had a bunch of access to S.H.I.E.L.D’s files and Tony figured he’d take advantage of that and get the scoop on their new house guests, which, in hind sight he probably should have already done. Actually he was pretty sure he told Nat that everything checked out so if he was wrong he was probably going to have to get in the suit and go hide in Rhodey’s basement or under Pepper’s desk lest Natasha eat him for lying. He figured he’d start with Steve, mostly because he was curious if Steve’s claims that he couldn’t control his Commands was actually real, and he was certain S.H.I.E.L.D would have files on that. He didn’t expect to find that Steve was a government experiment, a HYDRA experiment technically, supposedly designed to create the perfect soldier. That explained his too-good-too-be-true track record, excellent physic considering his eating habits left much to be desired, the distinct lack of sleep JARVIS reported, and the Commands.

The serum Steve had been injected with was designed to take everything about him and multiply it times ten, to make him perfect, eliminate the problems with the species he was a member of. The problem with that though was that Steve now couldn’t seem to turn off his ability to use Commands. The notes some Erskine made theorized that should the serum be used on an omega one of two things would happen, one, they would be in a constant state of heat, or they would be hyper fertile considering their evolutionary function was to bridge the fertility gap between alphas and betas, who were infertile at much higher rates than omegas. Tony, and this was probably because he was an omega, theorized that heats would be eliminated all together, they were technically a design flaw, but they hyper fertility was definitely a thing.

When he finds a video of Steve pre-serum he decides its popcorn time because this was bound to be good. Skye seems to have the same idea about the popcorn though and they end up squabbling over the last bag, “first off I paid for it, so technically I own it,” he says.

Skye snatches the bad out of his hand, “well I’m the one who went out and bought it so you can consider it payment for my labor,” she counters.

He takes the bag back and licks it, “it has my DNA on it it’s mine,” he says.

She wrinkled her nose and grabs the bag out of his hands, “I’m sure your long string of one night stands will be happy to hear your system of ownership,” she says and he snatches the bag before she runs off with it. He decides it’s now or never and he goes to run off with it only so have Skye jump on his back, “give me the damn popcorn Stark, I walked all the way across the house for it, it’s mine!”

“I left my lab! That’s more important!” he insists, holding the bag as far away from Skye as he could get it.

“No it’s not!” she yells, trying unsuccessfully to reach the bag.

“Has it occurred to either one of you to share?” someone asks from the kitchen door way.

They both look over to find Coulson there giving them judgmental looks, obviously unimpressed with their lack of thinking. “I don’t share,” they say in sync as Clint rounds the corner.

“Oh, popcorn!” he says and snatches the bag, running off before either one of them could do anything about it. Coulson lets out a long, drawn out sigh and walks off in the same general direction Clint ran off in.

“Now look what you’ve done,” Skye says, hopping off his back and smacking his arm, “now neither of us has popcorn.”

Tony sighs, “fine then, now that Clint has successfully ruined my life I’m going to back to my lab to laugh at whatever stupid things Steve did on camera,” he says, “care to join?” he asks.

Skye shrugs, “I’ve got nothing better to do, I was planning on eating that popcorn on my bed and passing out for the next seven hours but I guess watching random videos of Steve isn’t a worse prospect,” she says. They retreat to his lab popcorn-less and planning revenge on Clint, most of it centering around sticking laxatives in his Taco Bell but they both decide that’s redundant considering Taco Bell _is_ a laxative.

“So what are we looking at?” Skye asks and drops into _his_ chair, which, not happening.

“First of all you get out of that chair immediately, it’s mine. And I was doing some checking up on our guests and figured I’d start with Steve considering he’s the most immediate danger, with his inability to talk like a normal person and all. I found some interesting stuff,” he says and points to the screen, which Skye leans closer to so she could read what was up on the screen but she doesn’t move from his chair. He contemplates for a few minutes and figures fuck it, he might as well, so he pulls his chair back, Skye protesting as it goes, and plops himself in her lap.

“The fuck Stark?” she asks, looking annoyed, “you could have at least waited until I was done reading, now wheel us closer before you crush me with your giant ego,” she tells him and, rude. He complies though and he scans over the information, making mental notes and thinking of questions to ask, and he had about a million, while Skye reads through the notes. “Weren’t you supposed to do this _before_ they got here?” she asks.

“Yeah, but we both know Nat asked you too and you actually follow the rules so whatever you found checked out too,” he says. Plus he’s seen no evidence of their lovely alphas having any plans to hurt them, he didn’t need to be a spy to see ulterior motives, he dealt with enough of that in business to see plans in action.

“Okay but I didn’t find any of this, what if we find something that’s actually dangerous?” Skye asks, sounding concerned.

“I told JARVIS to ping anything dangerous, he came back with nothing, so I figure we’re fine. We have some interesting stuff here though, including some stuff on Coulson, which Clint will want to know I’m sure,” he says. He wasn’t _that_ irresponsible as to avoid his responsibilities completely. Okay, well, he was, but his life wasn’t the only one on the line so he only mostly wiggled out of it.

Skye makes a noise and pokes him in the side, “turn on the video, I want some entertainment and sorry Tony, but watching you make faces is not entertaining,” he says.

Tony snorts, “to you,” he says but complies, turning on the video and sitting back to watch, ignoring Skye’s token complaints when he does so. She retaliates by jabbing him in the side with a bony finger so he figures they’re even after that.

The video was mostly useless, just before and after performance tests showing some crazy impressive improvement and video evidence to back up Steve’s inability to control his Commands, and the video showed him trying considerably hard. Skye informs him he is boring and demands to be released and he lets her go, she may have found the video boring but Tony had questions and this video held some answers. He goes through it again, and once more for good measure before he finally finds what he was looking for, which happened to be a question and not an answer.

*

“What makes a Command a Command?” he asks, entering the common space where Natasha was trying to sort out rooms, no doubt trying to keep everyone the hell away from her. It wouldn’t surprise him much if they all ended up near him just because she wasn’t overly fond of him. She did feel responsible for him, for some reason though, and he was curious about that but he also knew he was never going to get an answer. Everyone turns to face him but no one offers him an answer.

He sighs, “okay guys, no need to be completely useless here. What makes a Command a Command? Certain tone of voice, a desired goal, something else?” he asks, figuring maybe someone will have an answer is they had some examples.

“I think the question you’re looking for isn’t what makes a Command, I’ve asked only to get dozens of responses, the question is what makes and omega compelled to follow? Why do you feel it?” Steve asks, frowning.

“I don’t like you but I like where you’re going” Tony says, “the answer varies but generally the pressure people feel should they fight it, if they want to, isn’t pleasant. Also Commands are designed to bring comfort, to help with bonding, for pleasure, a few other miscellaneous reasons. So what triggers that feeling of compulsion, regardless of whether or not the person follows the order? And how does the order itself work? Is it enough to follow it to the letter or does it go beyond that?” He could have continued but he figured he’d spare the room listening to his thought process.

Fitzsimmons looked like the Holy Grail was just presented to them on a silver platter; the two of them always enjoyed good questions almost more than they enjoyed good answers. “Excellent questions Tony, anyone willing to offer up their brains for some answers?” they ask in sync.

“First of all guys, creepy, the wonder twin thing is way weird when you aren’t used to it, I’d know. Also it’s fairly obvious that Steve is a great candidate for the one giving Commands, we can analyze others in comparison,” he says, “assuming you’re willing, obviously.” Fitzsimmons takes over, happily babbling away; content enough that they were listening to each other that they didn’t need other’s validation.

He figures he’d wander off, go do some stuff in the lab and whatever, when Bucky intercepts him. Natasha probably noticed he was missing from the room but he hadn’t, hadn’t really bothered to look beyond Steve because that had been his goal. “Hey,” he says, visibly trying to stay calmer than he obviously wasn’t.

“Hey,” Tony says back, “something’s obviously bothering you so what’s up?” he asks.

“Ugh, experiments? You framed it as a choice, but we both know that wasn’t really the case,” Bucky says, remaining calm but barely. Tony had given the other agent’s files a cursory glance when he had fixated on Steve’s, he was aware of Bucky HYDRA past.

“If you’re worried about being experimented on against your will it’s not happening, almost every single one of us knows what that’s like, we aren’t about to subject other people to that just because we want answers. Besides, if you have any doubt almost all of our questions centre around omega-alpha bonds, we won’t just be involved in the organization process of the experiments, we’ll be the test subjects too. And you’ll know full disclosure exactly what you’re walking into before you do, in the name of ethics and all that,” Tony tells him. Bucky visibly relaxes at Tony’s words and Tony suspects that his relief was, in part, because of the knowledge that they would also be involved in whatever experiments Fitzsimmons chooses to run.

“Well, that’s… relieving,” Bucky says quietly.

“Yeah, whatever, I don’t care about your personal issues. How many people has Sam Wilson slept with?” he asks.

Bucky perks up, “he got to you too? We haven’t even been here for a day, how is that possible?” he asks, looking very much like he was trying to figure out logistics in his head.

“Not today, obviously, he hasn’t had time. Duh. We’ve worked together before, we were fairly close in more ways than one, but seriously, the guy can get anyone to trust him in like four seconds flat. Does he have a super power? Lance and I think he has a super power,” he says, babbles really, because now he’s drifting off into his own thoughts again.

“You do that often, get lost in your own head?” Bucky asks.

“Sometimes. Doesn’t really matter to you either way, now does it?” Tony points out. They didn’t need to deal with each other in a way that would make that relevant.

“If I have to deal with you in the field, and Natasha implied that I would, then it’s relevant to me,” he says.

Tony snorts, “only time I’m in the field is in a metal suit, disastrous mission you halfassed saved me from notwithstanding. Natasha seems to have learned her lesson from that,” he says.

Bucky tilts his head to the side, “I got the impression that you were the leader?”

Tony isn’t a total moron, he knows Bucky is looking for information, but it isn’t something he couldn’t learn from observation anyways, “I think you’ve mistaken ‘leadership’ for ‘dictatorship’, when I don’t have the authority on something someone who does takes over, that’s what makes sense.”

Bucky nods, “yeah. Alright then. I suggest you hide everyone from Sam, I think he takes sex as a personal challenge or something because he always manages to find a way and the fact that everyone loves him kind of helps.” Yeah, didn’t Tony know it.                                             


	11. Steve vs Dummy

Tony has well-documented sleep issues and nothing seemed to help, including heavy sedatives. His mind was always loud, buzzing with ideas, connections, improvements, data and most of the time it was impossible to quiet. So he tended to be awake for days at a time, writing things down, testing his ideas, drawing out designs or whatever else he felt like doing. He was, as per usual; awake in the middle of the night working on fixing a few things on his suit when Steve appears in the doorway. Tony looks up and Steve halfheartedly waves at him, obviously expecting to be turned away but Tony is curious and he’s feeling a little reckless. He could practically feel Natasha’s upcoming ass kicking already, “and what do you want?” he asks, mostly malice free, as Steve walks in the door JARVIS opened.

“Can’t sleep,” Steve says, “and apparently neither can you. I got bored enough that I figured I’d take my chances and try and attempt a conversation with you.” He must have been pretty bored then because Tony hadn’t exactly proved himself overly approachable to Steve and he wasn’t about to accommodate now.

“Hmm,” Tony says and turns back to his work, ignoring Steve in the process. He, truth be told, was also bored and he was curious to see how this would turn out. Steve, to his credit, only sighs and sits on the floor with his back to the wall across from Tony’s desk and watches as Tony fiddles with random things on the suit.

Steve sits quietly across from Tony for about twenty minutes and Tony pays him no attention but he doesn’t lose himself in his work, far too aware of Steve’s presence for that.  “Bucky said you were lost in your work within minutes of him walking in, is there a reason you haven’t done that now?” Steve asks, giving Tony a shrewd look with his head tilted to the side.

“You make me anxious,” he says, stating the obvious. Some spy Steve was, it wasn’t as if the answer was complicated or difficult to put together.

“And Bucky doesn’t? You know how stupid that is, right?” Steve says, raising an eyebrow.

Logically Tony knows he’s right, it wasn’t as if Bucky was somehow less dangerous and looking at his records he probably matched Steve in the danger department, but Tony gets pissed off anyways. “First off don’t call me stupid, I’m not stupid. Second, Bucky practically exudes anxiety, he’s way too wrapped up in his own issues to create more with me, also I knew right away his Commands weren’t all that strong anyways,” he says. Steve gives Tony a skeptical look and Tony rolls his eyes, “don’t look at me like that, I’ve seen the look enough times to know what it means. That squinty eye thing you people do, like omegas are bugs that you can step on or something. It’s creepy and it makes me anxious,” he says.

“I do not look at you like you’re a bug I can step on!” Steve says, scandalized, “I don’t look at anyone like that!”

Tony gives Steve the same skeptical look he got a few minutes before and Steve glares him down, doing that squinty eyed bug thing Tony literally just mentioned, “I liked you better when you were skinny,” he says.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve snaps, tipping his head up defiantly.

“So you and skinny you do have something in common, I was starting to wonder if that serum personality snatched you, you know, like body snatching but with personalities. Whatever. Point is skinny you was a different person, you wanted to help people, and you had such drive to do it, it was kind of inspiring. But it’s like you got that serum and all that drive just… went away, like because you knew people would listen to what you had to say you no longer felt compelled to speak out. And you do that squinty eyed bug thing and call geniuses stupid,” he says, still bitter about Steve’s callous comment. He was not stupid, reckless, a bit of an asshole maybe, but he wasn’t stupid contrary to what everyone else thought.

Steve seems content to think about Tony’s words as Tony continues working on his suit. “I think Natasha’s wrong about you not being spy material,” he says some time later, giving Tony an appraising look.

Tony snorts, “you’ve never seen me do anything spy related,” he says. He was a fucking disaster and he was okay with that, not everyone was cut out for espionage and he was definitely one of those people.

“I saw you draw a connection to a personality change that was incredibly drastic that no one but you noticed from bare minimum observations from before and after a transformation you weren’t even present for. Give yourself some credit, that’s impressive, mostly because you’re right. I guess it’s easy to lose sight of issues when you don’t really have to deal with them anymore,” he says.

Tony shrugs, “it isn’t like you’re the only asshole that sits on the top of the social pyramid and was content to bury his head in the sand until terrorists fucked his life over,” he says and Steve brightens, probably thinking he made some sort of connection but Tony was just making a basic observation.

“I knew I could get through to you,” he says, smiling and mostly Command free now. So that changed with mood, interesting.

“I was making a basic observation, not trying to connect with you,” Tony says bluntly, not caring if he hurt Steve’s feelings.

Steve doesn’t seem to take offense, “sure. So what are you working on?” he asks. Tony gives him a very long and convoluted explanation of what he was doing and uses as much jargon as possible to throw Steve off. It works because Steve takes all of three seconds for Steve to start struggling to keep up and another two to lose him completely. Tony goes back to his work and Steve sighs, sitting for another few minutes before he speaks again, “okay, I get it, you don’t like me. But you must have some questions for me or about me or whatever. From what I’ve seen your mind is always running at a mile a minute and some of the things you’ve pointed out were things I had never even thought of.”

Tony decides to throw the guy a bone, mostly because he’s been wondering. “That serum increased everything good about you, it basically eliminated the flaws you as a person had and that humans as a species had, right?” he asks and Steve nods, “so that includes an increased sense of smell?” Steve nods again, probably knowing where this was going. “I don’t get it, your Commands increase in power tenfold, so does your sense of smell, but you only have a lack of control over the Commands and apparently no reaction to my heat? That makes no sense,” he says, trying to think through the logistics.

“Are you saying I should have… raped you? Because that is a level of fucked up I don’t even want to touch,” he says, Commands making a comeback.

Tony rolls his eyes, “no you twit, I’m wondering why your lack of control only sits in one area, I mean it would make sense-”

“No, it wouldn’t, alphas who like to claim that they can’t control themselves around an omega’s heat scent are barbaric assholes looking for an excuse to absolve themselves of all responsibility for their actions and blame it on idiotic beliefs of biological determinism. I _cannot_ believe that you ascribe to that opinion,” Steve snaps.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “you done?” he asks and Steve gives him a look that would make someone lesser shrink in fear, “I _don’t_ ascribe to that opinion, thank you, it would make sense because you’ve made excuses for not being able to control your Commands, why not make excuses for every other unhealthy alpha behavior you might have? Especially given that you’re biology is significantly better and more… alpha-y than your other alpha counterparts. I can’t believe you thought I would believe that biology makes rape okay, what the fuck? I’ve had enough people make rude comments to me on the street or on the internet or decide it’s appropriate to comment on my heat scent in business meetings to know that ‘biology made me do it’ is total bullshit. Besides, if that was true omegas wouldn’t be able to control their urges either, we’re all supposed to want kids and shit so why wouldn’t we pounce on the nearest looking fertile thing to either get pregnant or try to get it pregnant? The answer? ‘Biology made me do it’ is total bullshit,” he says.

Steve snorts, “alright then. I guess you make a point about the excuse making thing, I hadn’t thought of that,” he admits, which, duh. “I never considered the reverse argument with omegas being a slave to their ‘natural’ urges but that makes sense and if alphas who ascribe to that biological deterministic view disagree I’d wonder why,” he says.

“The alpha-omega dichotomy, like every other binary that exists, exists to promote one group over another and while biology is used to explain away and naturalize violent alpha behavior, but only for men, it serves to shame omegas, particularly women. Basically society is shit we need to throw it out,” he says. He’s spent a lot of time thinking about throwing out North American bullshit and he was pretty sure he could do it; he’s revolutionized enough stuff that he was confident he could revolutionize laws and such too.

“You’ve thought a lot about this?” Steve says and his voice goes up at the end, like it’s a question.

“I don’t get a choice but to think about it all the time, it’s my life. Which is sad considering I’m basically on the top of the social pyramid.” He had spent a lot of time re-evaluating his life after he had been kidnapped, spent a lot of time talking with Yinsen, time talking with Clint and Natasha. In a matter of six months his world view made so many changes it was a wonder he was the same person. Yinsen once said he was a man with everything and nothing and sometimes when he was awake for a long time and alone he thought about that. He wished Yinsen was wrong but everything he had was so superficial, and it was all great, he was definitely happy that he had money, but that was all he really had. Worse, it was his own damn fault. Yinsen told him he alienated all of his relationships because he was terrified that he would be alone, which became ironic because he made his own worries come true.

Steve considers Tony’s words and eventually makes a face, “do people really make comments about your heat in business meetings?” he asks, looking grossed out.

Tony sighs, “yeah, which makes no sense because I’ve never been in heat in a business meeting for that purpose. I didn’t really have a use for those people’s companies but I decided hostile takeovers were necessary anyways and they were all so damn hung up on me being a party boy omega they practically handed their companies over,” he says. People were so dumb, thinking that his personality made him _less_ likely to be able to get shit done. Clearly they didn’t bother to look past their own misconceptions about him to see anything resembling the truth.

Steve laughs, “nice,” he says, “very you.”

“You don’t know me,” Tony says, looking up at Steve, who shrugs.

“Maybe not, but I know enough. I remember when you first took over Stark everyone called your ability into question, you had one hell of a reputation by then, and you told them you’d make Stark a multibillion dollar company in five years. Everyone laughed at you, told you you had delusions of grandeur. You did it in two years.” Steve sounds impressed but Tony doesn’t give him any brownie points for it, it _was_ impressive.

“It only took that long because I was slacking,” he says. He could have done it within a year and a half if he had stuck to his plan, but he decided that regular vacations were going to be a thing so he lost some time partying with, well, everyone.

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, “you were _slacking_? Tony in that two years you revolutionized technology so much the only way anyone had a hope to break into that business was to work for you. You’re still the forerunner in tech and almost everyone else who has ideas only get the chance to work on them because of programs you designed. That’s hardly slacking,” he says, frowning, “what do you think about your company’s comeback when you decided to stop making weapons? At least I assume that was you.”

“It was me,” Tony confirms, “and if I was in the public eye things would go faster, but Pepper is more than capable of running Stark. People just have more faith in what I can do, which really isn’t fair because Pep has always been instrumental in my success,” he says. They met when he was twenty when a friend of hers had dragged her to one of his parties and they had ended up in a heated debate about the future of Stark Industries. Pep had been the reason he had gone back as soon as he had; assuring him that he wasn’t his father, that she wouldn’t let him be. That didn’t end up panning out but in Pepper’s defense he wasn’t very good at taking criticism and he would have done what he wanted anyways, he suspected she knew that and let him be until he came to the conclusion that he was a raging prick.

Steve tilts his head to the side, “I was wondering what you thought of yourself, interesting that you immediately jumped to Pepper’s defense,” he says.

Tony shrugs, “people are awful to her, saying that I’d hate her, that I’d be so pissed off or ashamed and worse when the entire time it’s been me making the changes. I don’t think I would have gotten half as much criticism as she has and the only reason the comeback took a year was because people doubted her left and right despite the ample evidence that the company was doing just fine in her hands, better than it had in mine even. Whenever I decide I’m bored with this I’m going to have _so_ much fun telling everyone all of this was me and demanding apologies for Pepper.”

Steve snorts, “Pepper Potts does not look like the accepting apology type,” he says, “too proud.”

Tony laughs, “yeah, she’ll tell them to shove it in a really nice and condescending way that’ll make them look like total assholes. There is a reason I love her,” he says.

“Are you two dating then? I’ve heard the rumors of course, but neither of you ever confirmed them, not really. Actually if I didn’t know any better I’d say the two of you made a game out of the whole thing, creating entire stories just to fuck with people.” Steve frames it like he doesn’t already know that’s true but he’s seemed to have picked up on something no one else saw in those papers because he was right and his supposed relationship with Pepper always seemed to increase sales and press.

“Guess you don’t know better. We got bored of the paparazzi always being in control of our lives so we decided to manipulate them all, make them cover stories we wanted them to cover, control the media. Worked like a charm,” he says, grinning.

Steve smiles, “that’s genius. I always wondered how much of those stories were true, they always seemed to centre around your company’s projects, always related to your politics. It all seemed very staged to me but everyone else thought I was being paranoid, thinking you were controlling the media. Guess I was half right, except you tricked them into doing what you wanted instead of outright made them.”

“Pepper came up with the plan, she’s smart like that, and they all bought our set-ups for the most part, there was that really weird story out of left field that proposed I was actually dating Rhodey, but other than that it all went as planned,” he says. It was even better because his sex life was very public and Pepper had no problem shutting people down whenever they asked about it, which had led to Pepper finally telling everyone they had an open relationship. The media had gone nuts and so had the Republicans, but at the time he’d been deep into weapons so they couldn’t shit on his too much because they tended to be a bunch of war mongering twits. Rhodey had had a laugh about the results of that, watching as they tried to come up with a way to shame his relationship without actually pissing him off.

“I remember that, the Republicans were so weird about it,” Steve says, “but then they probably wanted your bombs so I guess they couldn’t be assholes.” Tony shrugs and goes back to his work, significantly more comfortable with this situation than he had been when Steve first showed up.

Steve doesn’t seem to feel the need to force conversation and starts poking around, drawing Tony’s attention when Dummy shoos him away from some filing cabinets. Steve seems to take this as a challenge and Tony watches as Steve tries increasingly stupid and convoluted ways to try and get to the files in the corner. Tony was going to have to rewire Dummy so the damn bot was less blatantly obvious about where the important things were kept. In Dummy’s defense the files were distractions really, Tony kept everything in the floor of his lab, safely located underneath some cupboards no one would think a secret room was under.

Eventually Tony decides the Steve vs Dummy fight was more interesting than his suit and plops himself in his desk chair to observe. Dummy puts up a good fight but when Steve climbs the cupboards and jump onto the exposed beams on the ceiling he can’t really do much but freak out by the filing cabinet. He hadn’t much expected he was going to get an amusing tech vs human fight with Steve of all people tonight but he was content to watch Steve manage to swing himself from beam to beam as Dummy seemed to come to the conclusion that he was fucked. Steve manages to go from one side of the room for another and Tony can practically see Dummy scouring his own code for a solution to this problem and when Steve drops onto the top of the cabinet Dummy finds it.

Tony pulls his legs under himself as Dummy smacks himself into the cabinet and Steve nearly topples over but he regains his balance fast. Dummy seems to think this is unacceptable and his claw spins in frustration, or at least what Tony perceived as frustration considering Dummy was a robot and couldn’t technically feel emotions. Either way Dummy decides to knock the cabinet over, pulling it away from the wall and sending it and Steve to the ground, spilling the contents of the cabinet everywhere. Tony grins, happy that his tech was so loyal even if Dummy wasn’t protecting anything important.

Steve picks up one of the papers that fell out of the cabinet and frowns, “are you fucking kidding me? I just spent a half an hour fighting a robot for _this_?” he asks, holding up an extremely unflattering dick pic.

Tony couldn’t help but laugh and once he starts he finds it almost impossible to stop because the cabinet was full of the most unflattering dick pics he’s received and Dummy’s protecting the cabinet served as a distraction. As if he’d leave important stuff just sitting around in the corner with no real protection or even a lock or something. He couldn’t believe Steve feel for that. “This is so funny,” he says as Steve sifts through the hideous penises, “I can’t believe you spent all that time to get to that cabinet,” he wheezes.

Steve sighs as Dummy snatches one of the dick pics out of his hand and drops it into the pile he was compiling on the fallen cabinet. “Well I didn’t think anything overly important was in there considering how exposed it was but when your clawed robot started freaking out I figured it was something at least kind of important. I should have known when you sat back to watch instead of reacting,” he says, “I’m guessing Dummy and the cabinet serve as a distraction of some sort?”

Tony shrugs, “something like that,” he says, “though Dummy’s supposed to be less subtle, but I named him Dummy, how subtle can the bot be?”

*

Bucky looks frustrated with the computer he was holding so Tony takes pity on him, walking over to see what Bucky was mumbling to himself. “For fucks sakes,” he mutters, “I don’t want to fuck single busty Russians in my area; I want to prove Steve wrong about the American Revolution, damnit.” Tony doesn’t mean to start laughing but Bucky just said all that with a straight face and a serious tone.

Setting the computer aside Bucky looks over at him, “it isn’t funny,” he says with meaning and really, it probably wasn’t to Bucky, but to him it was hilarious.

“Fine fine, what are you trying to find?” he asks, walking over and cringing at Bucky’s screen, “what have you done to it? No you keep your hands to yourself, you have tortured this machine enough. It’s okay,” he tells the computer, “I’ve got you,” he says and pets the screen.

Bucky gives him a look that was so done it looked like his soul exited his body and left a dead eyed shell behind. “God Bucky, call your soul back to yourself and get your shit together,” he says, “it’s the poor computer that’s suffering, what the fuck did you click on?” he asks, sifting through a freakish amount of junk. He’s literally met five year olds who knew how to use a computer with more efficiency that Bucky.

Bucky lets out a long drawn out sigh, “I’m not that good with tech,” he says as if Tony hadn’t just exited out of like fifty ads Bucky somehow managed to open.

“I have brown eyes,” he says and Bucky frowns at him, “I thought we were stating very obvious things,” he says.

He gets another dead eyed look as Bucky’s soul takes another exit so he figures he’d fix Bucky’s poor abused computer. Skye chooses to show up then, frowning as Tony clicks through more shit, “what the hell did you do to it?” she asks, all but running over to try and remove the tech from him so she could liberate it from his torturous grasp.

“I did nothing, _he_ did this,” Tony says, pointing at Bucky.

Skye looks between the two of them, “he doesn’t get that back until he knows how to not do… _this_ ,” she says, gesturing to a virus Tony uncovered and that was only the first of many.

“Duh,” he says and continues his diagnostics on the poor machine. Skye gives him a skeptical look but figures that he’s competent enough that she can take off again, sparing the computer an empathetic look.

“Can you just give that back?” Bucky asks, holding his hand out. Tony gives him a look but Bucky doesn’t seem to get the point and they end up in a staring contest that Tony eventually wins. He was good at staring contests, he did it a lot in business and alphas always got all weird when you refused to stop looking them in the eye. It worked with anyone, but more so when someone was trying to assert their dominance and you refused to cave in. Bucky seems to accept that he wasn’t going to give up the computer, which he was not, and instead he flops back into his chair and continuously gives him looks so Tony knew he was unimpressed.

“So while I bring your computer back from the brink have you slept with Sam?” he asks because he was still curious about Sam’s sex count.

Bucky frowns at him, “have you slept with Sam?” he asks, obviously finding the question weird and invasive, which was fair, but he underestimated how little shame Tony had in his sex life.

“Mmhm,” he mumbles, clicking through Bucky’s mess.

Bucky looks shocked, “you too? When? How? I knew he already managed to get to Skye, and also Clint because Coulson was really upset about it, but he got to you too? I thought he was working of thawing Loki,” he says, frowning.

Tony snorts, “we got together pre whatever this is. Tell Sam to quite while he’s ahead, Loki’s basically being Elsa from Frozen makes a lot of sense because he’s got a frozen heart that will not be thawed with sibling love,” he says, “so like more like the original tale.”

“I hope not, the original is creepy,” Bucky says, “but Sam’s got to you too?” he asks.

Tony nods, “Steve?” he asks and Bucky nods, “damn. Sam’s got a superpower or something.”

“If you’ve fucked Sam you know he has a whole slew of superpowers,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow.

Tony thinks about it and nods, “that is true, everyone should have sex with Sam, it’s an experience and a half,” he says and that was an understatement and a half, “ _seriously_.” And he’s had experiences, Sam had such talent he was a category unto his own. Bucky gives him a very serious nod.                                                                   


	12. The Bet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a 10 page paper due in a few days. You know what I did? Wrote fucking fanfic. I am an actual trash can.

“If you want advice on how to deal with Tony just know that at all times Tony Stark is just like a cat,” Sam says, “he wants attention all the time, but only if it’s the exact attention he wants otherwise he will bite you. He hates being cold so he will cuddle, but only on his own terms, try and keep him there and he will bite. Tony also likes to do whatever he wants and if you tell him no he’ll start knocking shit off tables while looking you dead in the eye to establish dominance, spray bottles will not correct this behavior. The trick is to always make it seem like it’s his idea, I learned from Pepper,” Sam tells them. Coulson, ever the overachiever, is taking notes, probably because he wants to impress Clint by getting along with everyone. So far he was mostly succeeding given that Wanda had yet to toss him into a wall, which was better than Tony, who had been pushed into two separate door frames that day alone.

Everyone else had taken Sam’s bet that they couldn’t get Tony to like them and so far the only three with even the slightest chances of winning based off actual personalities were Bucky, Thor, and if Tony got over his anxiety around Steve him too. Bobbi, Sam suspected, would win simply because she could get anyone anywhere to trust her in seconds of meeting her. It was why she was so good, and also fun to work with. “Do not, under any circumstance, no matter how dumb his idea is, tell him that he can’t do the thing because he will do the thing if you tell him it’s stupid. For example when we were in the process of making my wings he decided it was a good idea to test them by jumping off the top of SI. Naturally I tell him that’s a god damn dumb idea and you know what he does? Looks me dead in the eye and jumps over the edge and he _refused_ to admit he did something dumb because the wings worked. You know how white people have no sense of self-preservation? Tony is the king of white people with no self-preservation,” he says, “like Steve, Bucky this should be a breeze for you. They’re basically the same person.”

Steve looks offended, “I would not jump off a building to prove I’m right,” he says, “that’s just needlessly reckless.”

“Damn right,” Bucky says, nodding approvingly and looking fiercely protective over his friend.

“Okay but if I did I’d be fine,” Steve says, proving Sam right unintentionally.

“You will not go jumping off buildings for any reason,” Bucky says, offended that Steve would even suggest such a thing.

Steve, as expected, gives Bucky a stubborn look, “I’d be _fine_ ,” he says, “because I’m not an idiot who takes needless risks.”

Bucky looks flabbergasted, “Steve jumping off a building _is_ a needless risk,” he says.

Steve wasn’t going to admit this any time soon though so the two continue to argue about jumping off buildings, “Tony’s a lot like Steve, very stubborn, except anyone telling him his idea is dumb will get this reaction,” Sam says, pointing at Steve and Bucky, who were still arguing.

*

Tony was irritated with the number of people who seemed to think it was appropriate to harass him. He swore they all thought he was a moron, Lance told him about the bet as soon as Sam made it and even though Tony wasn’t an idiot, he knew Lance told him so _he’d_ win the bet, he still liked Lance better. He was debating on whether or not he was going to fuck with them all for funsies. Unfortunately for him he wasn’t good at this sort of thing, people weren’t his forte, he didn’t play well with others and so he decided it was a good idea to go to someone who _was_ good with this stuff.

Loki opens the door, looking harassed, and almost slams the door in Tony’s face but Tony’s reflexes have gotten faster since Natasha started regularly kicking his ass in the name of ‘teaching’ him to fight. “Want to fuck with the alphas?” he asks. This, as expected, intrigues Loki enough that he opens the door and looks Tony up and down, appraising him like he was a bug under a microscope. Tony was more than familiar with this form of intimidation having dealt with it since, well, birth considering this was always how his father and literally every other business partner had. It was one of the reasons Loki had been attracted to him to begin with, he hadn’t folded under Loki’s frosty glare and instead he had challenged him. Too bad Tony didn’t know Loki and Elsa were twins or he would have just slept with Loki like a normal person and taken off rather than getting attached and ending up with a frozen heart that Loki wasn’t fixing anytime soon.

“Speak,” Loki says, having deemed the situation worthy of his time.

Tony rolls his eyes and remains silent long enough to push his way into Loki’s room, irritating Loki further by doing so. Good. “The alphas have made bets on who ends up my best friend first, Lance has won but none of them know that and I figured you’d be happy to fuck with them,” he says. Loki’s room was a mess, which largely indicated that he was feeling as chaotic as his surroundings. Loki’s space said far more about him than he ever would about himself and he knew it, which was why he was such a private person. He didn’t like the idea of people being able to read his moods through his space, the same way Tony didn’t though Tony’s space being clean meant that Tony was in a particularly chaotic mood. He and clean didn’t get along, not in the lab, things everywhere meant his ideas were flowing, that things were going well, if things were put away he was stuck and typically in a bad mood because of he was stuck.

Loki considers his words, “what’s the point of trying to get _you_ to like them, I’m sure they all have better things to do than gain your approval,” Loki says scathingly.

“The fuck if I know, ask Sam, he was the one who made the bet,” Tony says irritably, already regretting his decision to team up with Loki to fuck with people. He should have just let it be but no, he had to go get ideas and then try and follow through on them. He was a moron.

Loki sighs, looking pinched, “how did we end up like this?” he asks.

Tony isn’t feeling very charitable so he decides to go for the throat, “we got here because you can’t handle basic truths about your own feelings being pointed out to you,” he says bluntly.

“Oh as if you’re any more open minded,” Loki snaps, apparently losing any motivation he had to be polite.

“I fully recognize that I’m an emotionally stunted asshole,” Tony says flippantly.

This only serves to irritate Loki more, “out,” he snaps, pointing to the door.

Tony rolls his eyes and walks out, “later, Elsa,” he says and slams the door just before whatever Loki threw at his head actually connected.

*

He wasn’t sure who, exactly, thought that it was a good idea to drag him into a ‘training’ session when he was clearly pissed off but he was cursing whoever it was now because this was the third time Natasha has slammed him into a mat and he was more pissed off than he started. And Natasha was a shit teacher, she kept swearing at him in Russian and telling him to learn, which was annoying because if that was _possible_ he’d go ahead and do that. He figured his inability to pick up on how to fight would have nicely conveyed his obvious lack of talent in the area but no, Natasha insisted on kicking his ass at least twice a week in the name of ‘learning’, which was a term he used loosely because he never learned anything. Well, that was a lie, he learned that Natasha made a shit teacher, and that he really didn’t like being out of his suit in a fight, and that he was terribly underqualified for spy work.

“ _Tony_ ,” Natasha says, sounding as frustrated as Tony felt, “would you _pay attention_ and learn, damnit?” she snaps, obviously just as annoyed with the current situation as he was. It hadn’t helped that a small crowd gathered to watch and Tony never had been fond of failing let alone in front of a crowd and Natasha was just growing more and more annoyed with his inability to pick up on her moves.

“Right,” he snaps, “as if I haven’t been paying attention to my ass getting handed to me for the last forty minutes, yeah okay,” he says and rolls his eyes. If he was anyone else he suspected Nat would have punched him in the face but they had a weird understanding in these situations given that they both got frustrated in five seconds or less whenever Nat decided this was a good plan. Thankfully Nat decides not to punch him for rolling his eyes, not that it would do much more than make him roll his eyes again.

Natasha sighs heavily, “just… pay _attention_ ,” she tells him like this time was going to be different than the other seventy times she’s told him to do that. He _was_ paying attention but he didn’t _get_ it and nothing Natasha was doing was helping.

“You aren’t teaching him right,” Steve, Tony knew because his damn voice was tinged with a Command which was annoying however unintentional, says.

Natasha’s eyebrows shoot up and she fixes Steve with a look that would make lesser people run for the hills, “oh really? Fine then, _you_ teach him,” she says, “it isn’t as if he’ll listen to you, well, unless you force him to,” she mumbles under her breath but it’s loud enough that everyone hears it and crinches, including Steve to his credit.

He doesn’t appear to be daunted though and he steps up to Tony as Natasha walks away, “alright, I’m going to assume you know quite a bit about human anatomy, yeah?” he asks and Tony glares at him.

“I have a very good working knowledge of anatomy yes, biology isn’t why I’m shit at throwing a punch,” he snaps.

“Actually your punching skills are just fine,” Steve tells him, “it’s your ability to land the punch that’s the problem. Now, you obviously know how code works, how each new thing in the code predicts how the rest will work or stop working, yes?” he asks, raising an eyebrow at Tony.

Tony rolls his eyes again, “you’re seriously asking me, a tech genius, if I _know how code works_? Obviously I know how fucking code works, I’ve literally generated entirely new forms of code for half my tech.”

Steve, to his credit, only looks minorly irritated with Tony’s outburst and he recovers quick, “there’s a method to my madness, think you can hang on a minute to see where I’m going with it?” Steve asks with far more patience than Tony probably deserved.

He sighs, “fine then,” he says, “go on.” He probably would have been nicer but he didn’t feel like it, he was having a bad day and besides it wasn’t like he was being a total asshole, he was just being a bit of an ass.

“Great. Well human bodies work similarly to machines, all the parts you’d use in a fight are essential to making the whole of the fight continue, you start taking things out, breaking things, bruising things the body starts to react like a malfunctioning machine. Only unlike a malfunctioning machine you want to make the problem _worse_ , and if you have knowledge of anatomy you should be able to do that just fine. Now move with me,” Steve says and Tony doesn’t get a chance to ask what the hell that meant before Steve steps forward and he takes a step back automatically.

Steve takes another step forward, but he moves to Tony’s left and Tony side steps away again, making sure his back isn’t to Steve and he’s out of Steve’s reach. They do this for a few minutes before Tony realizes he’s on the defensive and fuck that, he never has been the type to back away from a fight so when Steve takes a step forward he does too, putting them almost chest to chest and he glares up at Steve. He realizes that he probably looks like an angry puppy but he didn’t particularly care at the moment.

Steve doesn’t step away but Tony hadn’t expected him to, instead he stares down at Tony, appraising him. “See, you have no problem reading body language at all, you accurately predicted where I was going and moved away as you saw appropriate and when you decided you were becoming overly predictably you broke pattern and stepped forward instead of back. You clearly have what you need to learn to fight, you just don’t know how to translate theory to practice very well,” he says and steps back.

Tony frowns because he hadn’t considered those things and even if he had he wouldn’t have thought he was any good at them. “Alright,” he says slowly, “then what am I missing?” he asks.

Steve gives Natasha a cursory glance and even though Tony knows what Steve was about to say it still surprises him when he says, “a good teacher for one. No offense Natasha, but you expect Tony to learn in the same way you do and that’s obviously not true. As adaptable as you may be it clearly doesn’t translate to teaching because it never seemed to occur to you to change the way you were teaching Tony.” He wasn’t cruel, he says it like it’s a basic fact and Tony supposes it was but it was still harsh regardless of the truth the statement held. Natasha takes it well though, showing little reaction as Steve turned back to Tony, “so let’s get to work.”

It turned out Tony wasn’t actually terrible at fighting; he wasn’t very good either, but better than he had previously thought. Natasha was not impressed when Tony picked up more in twenty minutes with Steve than he had in years with her and neither was Tony. All this time he wasn’t an untalented moron, he just wasn’t picking things up because he wasn’t being taught in a way he understood. Steve explained things in a way that was easy to understand, and he explained _why_ Tony was supposed to move in the way he suggested. He understood why Natasha taught in the way she did, really, he hated teaching people about tech because half of their questions were so fucking obvious to him he had no clue how people didn’t just _know_. Obviously she thought the same way and resulted in the two of them being very frustrated with one another because Natasha knew what she meant and Tony was lost.

Steve, he thinks, was trying to build his confidence, which totally would have worked if Tony hadn’t decided to punch Steve in the stomach and ended up on the ground curled around his fist whining. “What are you made of?” he asks, giving Steve some unimpressed looks as he doubled over laughing at Tony’s reaction. Everyone else seemed to find it amusing too and in their defense he had reacted pretty hilariously. If he was them he would have laughed at him too because he punched Steve and then threw himself on the ground and started crying about his hand hurting.

“I’ve never seen anyone go from determined to done so fast,” Steve wheezes, “are you okay?” he asks.

“No!” Tony yells, “your abs broke me!” This makes everyone laugh harder and he is offended that any one person’s gut could hurt so much to hit. “I give up on this,” he says and decides he was going to lay there on the ground for the next forever.

Steve is laughing so hard he sits down so he can laugh harder, “I don’t think this is funny,” Tony says, “this is a god damn travesty. People were not meant to be built like that; you’re like made of steel or something!” He never had been fond of pain and he knew this was a bad idea, he told Natasha this was dumb, he’d stick to being the tech master and fighting in his suit.

“Tony it’s just muscle,” Steve says and reaches forward to pat his leg, “now get up.”

Tony relaxes all his muscles, “no.” He was done with this now, he tried, he failed, he was okay with that and now it was time for him to move on to things he liked. Namely anything but this.

“Alright fine, you win, but you were doing just fine until you decided it was a good idea to punch me,” he says, “I don’t think you should give up now.”

Tony lets out a loud and dramatic sigh, “I’m done. I’ve decided. Now throw me back to the sea,” he says.

*

Clint was fond of Coulson, they got along surprisingly well and Fitzsimmons was having a metaphorical cow over their brain scans. They’ve run about a million and one experiments to see how the bond worked and it’s resulted in them rooting for Clint and Coulson to get together. Clint may have given in earlier but Coulson doesn’t understand his love for food and he’s not sure he can love someone who doesn’t understand his love for food. He was upset Nat hauled off and ended up with Bruce because she _got_ it, they both loved food more than people but no. Off with Bruce she went.

Coulson shows up in Bruce’s lab, likely because Bruce called him to pick Clint up or shoo him out or something but he wanted some damn peace from the absurd competition the alphas made out of earning Tony’s friendship. None of them even cared about Tony’s friendship, they just didn’t want to lose and Tony knew it so he’s spent the last two days fucking with them all. Clint was pretty sure he’s employed Loki’s help but the two still seemed to hate each other so maybe not, either way he wanted to eat his pasta in peace without having to deal with whatever stupid thing Tony had gotten the alphas to do now. At least Melinda seemed to think the competition was stupid, and Bobbi was smart enough to see though Tony’s shit, Lance seemed to have fun helping in getting the alphas to all trip over each other. Sam seemed to be having fun fucking with them all too, but from what Clint has gathered Sam is a rare breed of chaotic good, at least in his personal life.

“Clint what are you eating?” Coulson asks, giving his pasts a disdainful look.

He isn’t sure why he feels compelled to defend his pasta’s honor but he does, “it’s my dinner, Coulson, and it tastes great,” he informs him.

He wasn’t sure what he was expecting Coulson’s reaction to be but he didn’t expect him to knock Clint’s food off the table and into the trash can he strategically moved there. Clint stares at his fallen food for a few seconds before he lets out an inhuman screech, “my pasta!” he yells and dives for the can.

Coulson expects this reaction though and he kicks the trash can out of the way, sliding it closer to where Bruce was glaring at them for interrupting his work. “I will straight up eat that out of the trash,” Clint warns, he’s done it before and he’d do it again.

“You will not eat food out of the trash, Clint! For god’s sakes, why would you even consider that? And trash in a _lab_ no less, god knows what Bruce has stuck in there and you’re going to eat out of it?” he asks, looking horrified with Clint’s decision.

“You threw out perfectly good pasta, you did this to yourself,” Clint tells him and crosses his arms. Coulson was a god damn travesty, throwing out _pasta_ because he didn’t like it.

Coulson sighs, “you should eat healthier, Clint,” he says and he can feel that Coulson is trying to help him, really, it’s sweet. But he threw _pasta_ in the garbage. Clint just can’t love someone who doesn’t love pasta.

“I’m not eating salad; I will die before I eat salad. Salad is the invention of the devil and it was made with the intention of making people suffer,” he says.

Coulson rubs his temples, “Clint salad is not Satan, its leaves. Now stop over reacting and assuming I’m going to attempt shoving salad down your throat and come with me, I made actual food and I’m sure you’ll like it,” he says.

He isn’t a moron, he knows that Coulson is trying to lure him out of Bruce’s space with food but he’s seen what Coulson eats, he is _not_ going to eat something with a fancy name that is essentially salad. “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” he says, “I am not going to eat whatever monstrosity you labeled ‘not salad.’”

“I made tacos-”

“Done,” Clint says and hops off the stool ha had stolen out from under Bruce’s ass a half an hour before and heads over to the trash can to fetch that pasta. It was fine, he literally just took the trash out but Coulson has other ideas.

“ _Clint_ , get _out_ of that!” he snaps, Command tinging his voice. Clint could have resisted and they both know it, Coulson meant it to be that way, his intention was to let Clint know he was serious about not eating trash food. Clint decides to ease Coulson’s overly anxious mind and leave the trash be so he could see what Coulson meant by tacos. He better not have made fucking taco salad, Clint will fight.

As it turned out Coulson was a total foodie but like, a healthy one, and if Coulson was doing the cooking he was willing to convert because the guy can _cook_. He’s changed his mind on not loving one Phil Coulson, he has made a mistake, Coulson just might be his Lord and Savior. “You are the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Clint mumbles around a mouthful of food.

Coulson looks very pleased with himself and Clint can feel his mind buzzing with pride, “told you healthy food wasn’t gross,” he says. He’d respond to tell Coulson that whatever he did to this food was a total fluke but it was so damn good he decided he’d just stuff more in his mouth instead.

*

Tony is having fun with the alphas running over each other in an attempt to impress him, mostly because the women seemed to realize this was fucking dumb, and because Lance, Loki, and Sam were having the time of their lives giving out false information. However fun it was to fuck with people he needed a new plan because his poor lab had become a revolving door and it needed to stop. Melinda and Bobbi seem to have gotten the memo because on day three they decide to come clean, telling him about the bet Sam made in an attempt to stop the madness. Truthfully Tony was rather fond of Bucky, and Steve was just so damn easy to guilt trip with the whole Commands thing, and everyone else was boring to him. At least Coulson seemed to realize the key to Clint’s heart was food and the two had finally started acting less like a squabbling old couple and more like a happy married couple.

“That’s nice, guys,” he says and turns back to his work though he’s still paying attention to where the two of them were situated. He wasn’t a moron, he saw Bobbi take Natasha on a few hours ago and almost win, and Melinda probably wasn’t any less well trained. He had a healthy fear of Nat and by proxy Bobbi and Melinda. Also Melinda looked like she could swallow nails and not flinch in pain and Tony didn’t trust people who didn’t feel pain unless it was a medical thing.

The two exchange a look, “you knew,” Bobbi says, catching on quick.

“Mmhm, Lance told me right after it happened, we’ve been fucking with you guys the whole time. You probably should be worried about how easily manipulated your teammates are. I mean Bucky I get, poor guy’s in recovery, but everyone else? Seriously, neither Mack nor Steve care about my friendship, they just want to outdo each other. Also I think Fitzsimmons has a crush on Mack, FYI.” He felt the information was necessary, even more so seems how Sam hit them up with his Sam magic too and now he knew far more about Fitzsimmons’ sex life than he thought he ever would.

Bobbi and Melinda exchange another look, silently communicating with each other. Melinda grins and Tony’s pretty sure his heart rate just spiked, “we want in on it,” she says and Tony gets this odd urge to flee the scene.

Bobbi smacks Melinda’s arm, “stop smiling, you’re freaking him out,” she says, “also who the hell is Fitzsimmons? I mean I know that’s how you refer to the two overly excitable scientists but _which_ one is Fitzsimmons? And who is Jemma? And Fitz? What the hell is going on there because the name thing has been confusing all of us.”

Tony calms himself a bit when Melinda stops looking like she’s going to tear his throat out with her teeth. “Fitzsimmons is Jemma and Fitz. Jemma is the woman, Fitz is the guy, but because they’re attached at the hip we just started combining their last names and calling them Fitzsimmons,” he says, “if you came to me like twenty minutes ago I would have been happy to let you in on our games but I put them all out of their misery so I can have my damn lab back,” he says and gives them pointed looks.

They either don’t get the point or they’re choosing to ignore his very obvious hints to get out of his lab, “okay one last question,” Bobbi says, “do you have any idea how many of us Sam has slept with?”

Melinda looks surprised, “you too?” she says.

Bobbi’s eyebrows shoot up,” _you_? I thought you’d be immune because, well, you’re… you. Damn, this is more wide spread than I thought…”

Sam, Tony knew, was having some serious fun with the rumors, spending a good amount of his time contributing to them for fun. Tony had always enjoyed Sam because he was a total shit disturber and he did it just to see what would happen though he was never cruel about it. He just spread a bunch of harmless rumors to see what would happen, like that supposed threesome with Pepper and Tony that he had asked Tony if he could spread. Everyone fell for it. Tony had gotten curious and thrown Rhodey in there too and people _still_ believed it.

Unfortunately the downside to Sam’s shit disturbing ways was that sometimes he got _ideas_ and decided it was a good idea to try and set people up with each other. So far he had contributed to Coulson and Clint getting together, he was working on integrating Mack into Fitzsimmons’ relationship, he decided to try his luck at patching Loki and Thor’s relationship, and Tony wasn’t sure if he was trying to set him up with Steve or Bucky but he was doing things there too. “I think it’s just safe to assume Sam has slept with everyone someone says otherwise, honestly he’s got a superpower or something,” one Tony wanted because really, how useful would that be?

“Okay but he has this weird habit of trying to set people up after, he’s totally been trying to get Lance and I together again, is that normal?” Bobbi asks, squinting at Tony.

He sighs, “I thought you only had one more question,” he says, “fine. Yes, this is a normal thing, he tried it the first time we met with both Pepper and Rhodey but picked up quickly that that was not going to happen,” he tells them, “now will you guys leave?” They thankfully do take their leave and Tony calls Dummy over to he can rewire a few things on the bot and hopefully he’ll stop trying to be friends with Steve.                      


	13. Bonding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have a chapter! Sorry it's taking like 7000 years for them to get together but we are almost there, I swear. But things gotta be realistic y'all. 
> 
> Also brief warning for poor Bucky's mental state :(

“There was a time in American history when people had to convince other people that _slavery_ was _bad_. _Slavery_ guys, what the fuck?”  Tony says, looking largely disappointed with history itself.

“White people,” Sam says, shaking his head.

“Right, why are we like this?” Tony asks, looking distressed.

Natasha sighs, “look, JARVIS says you’ve been awake for like seventy eight hours Tony, you need to go to bed,” she says.

“ _Slavery_ guys. There were people _for_ slavery, who the fuck thought this was a good idea, seriously guys. Think about this for a second, people had to argue that keeping people, _people_ , as slaves was not desirable. What kind of fucked up society has to argue people are people? Why. Why are things like this,” he says and sits down on the ground, staring at the wall opposite to him.

“Tony. Go the fuck to bed,” Natasha tells him. Tony’s response is to flop over so he’s lying on the ground and let out a long groan.

*

“Does he always do that?” Steve asks, frowning at Tony, who had passed out on the ground some time ago.

Natasha shrugs, “semi frequently. Did he go on some rant at you?” she asks. Tony, she felt, was very fun when sleep deprived but also she worried that his sleeping habits, or lack thereof, were unhealthy. So far she had not been able to curb his bad habits no matter what she tried and she had even asked Bruce for advice. That had been an absolute bust and she was never asking him for advice on Tony again because his advice was to let Tony be. In her opinion that was dumb, he was being self-destructive, he needed to stop that. She’d figure it out though, she always did.

“Yeah, he went on a long rant about gendered clothing, complaining that clothing was strips of fabric with stiches and there was nothing gendered about that. Then he said something about draping his dying flesh bag in whatever the hell he wanted to because if he was going to be stuck in a feeble body that was slowly dying from the inside out than he would damn well throw silk on it if he wanted to.” Steve looks generally confused about Tony’s statement but it was more of the same for Natasha, who’d been hearing this shit for literal years. Once she got annoyed with one of Tony’s rants, that particular one had been about heels originally being designed for men and now they wouldn’t touch them with a ten foot pole because maybe that will make them gay, which wasn’t how sexuality worked. So she dared him to walk in a pair of her heels and the fucker liked them so much she hadn’t seen then since, and she looked very hard for them too.

She wanted her fucking black pumps back; she stole them fair and square. Frankly she was upset that they had fit Tony well enough for him to steal them, apparently he had small feet though she hadn’t noticed until then.

“Yeah, he does that. ‘Dying flesh bag’ is new though, usually he prefers ‘flesh prison’,” she says, “mostly it’s when he starts asking weird existential questions like ‘do you realize we’re just pieces of meat with personalities?’ or ‘what if you could feel your blood moving through your veins?’ that you have to worry. Usually he passes out pretty fast after some of the more weird shit starts coming out but sometimes he ends up awake longer and he starts seeing sound and you have to start experimenting with Russian potions because he’s surprisingly resilient to sedatives,” she says.

Steve looks horrified, “you drug Tony?”

“It doesn’t count if he knows about it. Later, after he wakes up, we’ve talked about it and agree it’s the best course of action.” Tony generally didn’t remember half of his actions anyways, which was simultaneously hilarious, terrifying, and sometimes useful because he invented something cool and impossible. Unfortunately that also usually involved him doing something incredibly stupid because on the best of days he had no self-preservation instincts, when he’s been awake for days any instinct he has not to die disappears completely.  

“That… that’s still immoral,” Steve says, obviously judging her. He didn’t live with Tony for two years so he could shove it as far as he was concerned.

“You don’t know Tony, and you weren’t there the time he told Clint his breath sounded like the colour nine and that my hair smelled like a freshly shaved kitten. Trust me; drugging him is for his own good.” And that didn’t even include all of the crazy shit he’s done sleep deprived for no apparent reason. Like the rocket Heelys. That was hilarious, at least until he rocketed full force into a wall and got a pretty nasty concussion that had required Loki to take care of him and complain the whole time but not let anyone else take over. Loki was horrible, 0/10 she would not recommend.

Steve frowns, “what does a freshly shave kitten smell like?” he asks and the fuck if she knew. Tony’s answer was ‘space-time continuum’, which did not clarify things.

Instead of answering Steve she figured she’d deal with Tony’s presence in the hallway and kicks one of his feet, “go to bed,” she tells him. Tony makes annoyed noises and shimmies a bit but doesn’t move, “I’ll shave your face hair,” she says and Tony’s eyes open wide and he rolls onto his hands and knees and crawls away, presumably to his bedroom. She sort of felt bad for convincing him to shave his face hair for spy purposes before this whole mess started because it hadn’t even been useful but mostly she considered it payback for stealing her shoes. He felt very attached to his face hair, she felt very attached to her shoes, he should have given her shoes back and his face hair would have remained. 

“That was effective,” Steve comments and she chooses to ignore that too because that was a stupid statement, and she had some cultures of Bruce’s to go fuck around with. So far she’s managed to convince him a particularly disgusting potato salad experiment she and Clint made was some scientific discovery; she wasn’t sure what he supposedly found because science jargon made her brain stop working. It didn’t really matter, he was convinced he made some discovery and all he had confirmed was that she and Clint made a truly disgusting salad.

“Just make sure he doesn’t crawl back into the hallway, he does that sometimes. Throw him back into his room if he does decide to crawl back,” she says full well knowing that Tony had crawled off somewhere else, to his room or not was in question, and he was not crawling back anytime soon but she figured she’d fuck with Steve for funsies.

*

Tony never did sleep for very long, even if he was well and truly exhausted. It used to annoy Rhodey because he’d keep the poor guy up at all hours of the day and night to tell him about all his cool discoveries. Tony was very much under the impression that Rhodey undervalued all the cool shit he found but that may be because he regularly called him at strange times and he did not care if Rhodey was in the middle of sex, his science was way cooler and needed immediate attention. Regardless he still got strange looks when he made his reappearance a little after five hours after he passed out, he confirmed with Bruce, who had been much more excited that he had convinced Natasha that he was convinced he’s made some scientific discovery from potato salad. Apparently all it took to convince her was some scientific jargon and she stopped paying attention to what he was saying, which had essentially been ‘water is wet’ but in a more convoluted and complicated way. He kept up the body language because he knew she’d be reading it no matter how little attention she was paying to his words and now he was waiting for her to figure it out.

Frankly he didn’t care if Natasha’s very gross salad actually was a scientific discovery, when he was asleep he had an idea for phone updates and it’s been awhile since Stark released a new phone. Now he was on his way to the lab to work on prototypes and once he figured that out it was time for tests and he always had fun with the tests. Once he made a phone arrow proof for fun and Clint was more than happy to shoot prototypes. “You sure you’re alright?” Lance asks upon seeing him, “you were pretty tired, don’t you think you need more sleep?”

“Don’t you think I know my own sleep patterns better than you?” he snaps mostly unintentionally. He _loathed_ when people questioned his ability to judge his own body, Obi used to do it all the time. He liked to think his Commands for Tony to sleep more were subtle but they weren’t and Tony remained just as profitable a cash cow even with the severe insomnia. “I’m fine,” he says and Lance raises his lands and backs away wisely, walking off to do other things. He recognized that he should feel bad but he didn’t so he figured he’d go off to do other things too. The alphas, he noted, seemed interested in his reaction to Lance because thus far they were the only ones who had gotten reactions similar to that. They hadn’t been around long enough to note his hot buttons considering he only had like three but they’d take him from a decent mood to enraged in less than a few seconds. Nat knew them all, having figured them out when she had subtly interrogated him shortly after she and Clint found him wandering in the desert.

JARVIS greets him when he walks into his lab, asking how his nap was. They chat back and forth and JARVIS knows full well that Tony is only paying half attention to his words, his code was advanced enough to determine moods via examining body language and he had more than enough information on Tony to determine he was distracted. That was probably why he didn’t notice the entire human being sitting by his desk looking grumpy until he sat down and nearly rolled himself into Bucky’s lap. “Shit, Jesus, you’re a person. Okay. Sorry, sorry,” he says when Bucky flinches at the noise.

Bucky seems to recover fast, “no, no, it’s fine,” he says as he gathers himself.

“Are you alright?” Tony asks because Bucky looks exhausted, traumatized, and a little lost.

Bucky blinks slowly and it takes a second for him to register that Tony has asked him a question, “yeah, m’fine,” he says, “just not having a very good day. Came here because watching you work is calming for some reason but you weren’t here.”

Tony couldn’t imagine what about him blowing things up and accidentally hammering his own fingers or having one of his bots mistake his outrage for being on fire again could be calming but to each their own. “Okay,” he says, “but you might not want to sit almost under my desk because I’m bound to forget you’re there and that’s not going to end well when I accidentally run you over.”

Bucky frowns, “your fine with this?”

Tony shrugs, “you look more likely to kill yourself than me,” he says bluntly. Besides, Bucky’s had plenty of opportunity and he chose not to capitalize on it, Tony doubted that’s changed any.

Bucky lets out a harsh laugh, “you’re blunt. Stevie would never dare say that to anyone let alone me,” he says.

“I don’t see a point in sugar coating things, I find it more efficient to call things how I see them, makes them easier to deal with,” he says. Bucky nods in agreement and they lapse into a comfortable silence while Tony works on creating a working prototype so he can find bugs, eliminate them, and then work on making the thing basically indestructible. Last year someone accidentally baked their phone into a cake, he’d work on making it bake-proof. Plus he knew the kind of abuse he put his phones through, he used to regularly lose them out of helicopters, so he figured if he could make a phone that even he couldn’t destroy the general public would probably have a hard time breaking the phones too.

While he constructs a working prototype he notices Bucky fiddling with his arm in discomfort and eventually he gets bored of the phone ideas because Bucky’s arm was significantly more interesting. “Something bothering you?” he asks and pulls a bag of chips from his desk drawer.

Bucky eyes the chips suspiciously for a second and shrugs, “S’nothing,” he says, “it always gets like this when I over think things, when the flashbacks come. S’fine, I’ll get over it,” Bucky tells him and Tony isn’t so sure.

“Want me to look at it?” he asks. Mack, he figured, was the one who did the upkeep on Bucky’s arm considering he was the only one that was even remotely qualified to do such a thing but that didn’t mean he didn’t have something to offer.

“I… I’m not sure what you could do with it,” Bucky says after thinking on Tony’s question for a minute before replying.

“Well first of all the metal that arm is made out of is designed for weapons, not prosthetics, which is unsurprising considering HYDRA’s… um, _uses_ for you. But I could make the arm significantly lighter with a material that would give you the same durability but with a lot less requirements to keep muscle mass high. I’m sure I could do a bunch more but I don’t know the full makeup of the arm and any redesign would require me to take a bunch of x-rays. What’s you problem, exactly, with the arm when things get… hairy?” he asks gently, leaning down so he was closer to Bucky’s level.

Bucky thinks his answer over and Tony waits patiently for him to place words to feelings, he knew what it was like to not have a name to his own emotions and to feel out of control because of it. It wasn’t pleasant, feeling out of control, like you were the only person in the world that felt that way. Logically that was statistically unlikely if not flat out impossible but when everyone else seemed to function with no issues it felt as if you were alone and that was frightening. Even Natasha, who arguably had the most horrifying history out of all of them, seemed to function just fine, even _Wanda_ , who had to look at Tony every day seemed to function better than he had. If Bucky felt even remotely the same way it wasn’t very fun at all.

“Umm, I don’t know? I mean I do, but I don’t always feel like my arm doesn’t belong on me, like it’s some foreign part of my body that doesn’t really belong. I probably sound pretty stupid,” he says, frowning and looking away.

He doesn’t though, because Tony knows exactly what he means. “You don’t sound stupid at all; I get it, well, kind of. It isn’t like I can really understand what you’re feeling, we’re two different people but I can empathize. Sometimes it happens to me too, with the arc reactor,” he says and gestures to the glowing object in question, “but is it the tech itself or do you only feel like the arm is foreign when the memories come back, get bad?” he asks.

Bucky’s head tips up and his eyes widen in surprise, “yeah, that’s it, the second thing you said, about the arm only seeming foreign when the memories are bad. I’ve… I’ve never had anyone put that into words before,” he says, giving Tony an appraising look, like he just now realized that perhaps Tony actually could help.

Tony grins and rewards himself with some chips, “well, I do have a unique experience in non-con body modifications that bring on some very, very shitty memories. So what’s causing the problem hmm, what on your arm draws your attention when this happens?” he asks. Bucky opens up to him, telling him about his arm, Steve, a little about HYDRA though Tony was able to deduce what Bucky was saying despite not actually saying it. Bucky asks Tony questions too, but they’re far too personal for him to consider answering so mostly he says things without actually saying anything at all, but Bucky can’t read between the lines.

“Who hurt you?” he asks eventually, after Tony took about a million and one measurements and a bunch of x-rays. Tony blinks in surprise and Bucky gives him a look, “I’ve been beyond trained, brainwashed even, into recognizing all body language and figuring out how to use it against you until I manage to kill you. The way you act around alphas is similar to the way women react to men when they spot them in the dark, like you’ve been trained from birth to fear them. This isn’t a product of being kidnapped by terrorists who happened to be alphas.”

Tony would consider that a good observation but it wasn’t really, he never did react well to alphas because they always seemed to assume authority over him and he reacted even worse to authority than to alphas. “That’s a stupid question,” Tony settles on because it was. Bucky seems to think this is an insufficient answer and Tony feels bad for the guy having just opened up and all so he throw Bucky a bone. “You asked who hurt me full well knowing the answer was alphas so why ask? The question you want answered is ‘how did they hurt you?’ or maybe ‘what makes you so suspicious of them even when they’ve done nothing wrong?’, I could list a few more but I think you get the point,” he says.

Bucky considers this, “okay, out of the number of alphas that you’ve met how many of them caused you some level of harm and is that percentage why you’re so suspicious of alphas?”

Tony was impressed because at least that was an actual question, “some ninety eight percent,” he says, “and you’d be stupid not to fear a population that hurts you ninety eight percent of the time. Don’t look so surprised, every time I’ve walked into a room for almost my entire life people have treated me as if I was a prop. Talking over me, deciding what’s ‘best’ for me, telling me what I can and cannot do, what I am and am not capable of, staring at me like I’m some sort of sex object, sniffing at me, making rude comments. Almost every time I come in contact with an alpha they act as if they know what to do with my life better than I do, they talk about me like I’m not even there, like I’m a prop in my own life with which they must control by any means necessary. The amount of business partners who’ve tried to use Commands on me is nothing short of terrifying. Imagine if someone couldn’t resist? Makes me feel exposed, frightened. I’ve learned to overcompensate,” he says bluntly.

Bucky looks frightened himself, and shocked, “that… that sounds remarkably how HYDRA treated me. Minus the torture, but that only happened until I learned to play along, do what they want. That ever happen to you, torture?” Bucky asks.

Tony shrugs, “depends on what you consider torture. The terrorists that kidnapped me, they were ordered to kill me by Obadiah but they saw use for me. Unfortunately for them I’m very stubborn and claim bites did not make me easier to control, actually I’m pretty sure they killed the guys they had bite me because I’m strong willed enough to access the brains of the people who bite me, at least in my experience. So instead they chose to torture someone else because I saw more value in his life than mine and now he’s dead, mostly unrelated to torture. The real damage came from Howard though, he did damage I’m still trying to deconstruct, and Obadiah continued his shit long after the guy died until I wasn’t really me anymore, mostly I was Howard.” It took him nearly dying to figure that out and that upset him greatly.

Bucky doesn’t say anything to that, recognizing that Tony didn’t need or want to be comforted. Tony appreciates it because he loathed when people coddled him, which was why he enjoyed Pepper and Rhodey’s company so much, they never felt the need to treat him like china.

*

Sam, Tony was sure, was going to be the death of him and maybe Steve. Three times that asshole managed to shove them into the same room and somehow even managed to give them common topics to talk about without even speaking to either one of them. Two days ago their topic was dogs, turned out Steve was a dog person and Tony was particularly fond of cats, yesterday their topic was Bucky and the new arm Tony was designing for him, and today he was getting beat up by Steve. Tony wasn’t going to lie, if this was any other situation he would have tried to seduce Steve long ago because his body was _sinful_. This, however, was not a normal situation and he was not going to let Sam win even if that meant missing out on licking Steve’s abs, which was a damn travesty.

Steve notices that Tony isn’t paying attention though and calls him on it, “Tony, why are you so distracted?” he asks.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “have you seen you shirtless? Because if you haven’t, man you are missing _out_ ,” he says, shamelessly checking Steve out.

Steve looks vaguely and Tony would feel bad if Bucky hadn’t told him that Steve still had a lot of self-confidence issues from his skinny days. Now Tony was determined to point out that, _hello_ , Steve was hot, and also skinny Steve was hot too. He was upset that he’d missed out on that opportunity; he had _so_ many ideas and no skinny Steve to test them on. And big Steve was out because Sam had expectations and Tony refused to meet them, preferring his own expectations instead. “Tony stop staring at me and pay attention,” he says.

Tony snorts, “oh I’ve been paying attention, just not to foot work. Which is boring by the way, so I figured I’d focus on something more interesting, like your muscle movements, and I’d like to take this opportunity to point out I’m still technically learning.” And he was, but once Steve’s movements were becoming predictable he changed them again and Tony was getting annoyed of that.

“Stop being weird and pay attention,” Steve scolds and gives him a new set of instructions that Tony listens to, barely, because he had already worked out the logistics in his head.

Steve seems to sense something was up because he sighs and steps back, “what is happening in your head, you usually aren’t this… bad,” he says and wrinkles his nose at the word, like insulting Tony was distasteful no matter how true the comment was.

Tony shrugs, “you make your move, I figure it out, blah blah whatever, and then the next logical step is to figure out a new way to get the same results or a new way to get different but just as effective results. Obviously,” he says and makes a face, like he expected Steve to know that already.

Steve frowns, “Tony no, that’s not how fighting works, just go with the first idea,” he says.

Tony makes a face, “why would I do that though? Like I already know how to do that, you’re supposed to learn, not repeat the same five things over and over again,” he says like it’s obvious.

Steve’s eyebrows draw together, “Tony, no, that’s not how fighting works, it doesn’t really evolve like tech does. Just… just to the first thing you figure out,” he says.

Tony tries to process that, really, he does, but that makes no sense at all to him. “Why would you do that? Why wouldn’t you think of new, more efficient, faster ways to take out your opponent? That’s what makes sense,” he says. How… things didn’t function without improvement, innovation, without something _new_ happening.

“Fighting is a simpler concept than what you’re used to, you don’t really need to improve it if it works. I mean you have to take on every opponent in a different way but the human body never changes, you just need to figure out what makes that particular body break. That generally doesn’t involve more than recalling similar incidences or finding some particularly convoluted way to punch someone in the face,” he says.

Tony doesn’t get it because any fighting he’s participated in involved improvement of some sort thought it’s always involved tech. “Fighting is more art than science,” Steve explains, “once you figure out what works, and how other people work, it’s only  matter of time before someone falls. Just make sure that person isn’t you,” he tells Tony and they move through some more sequences.

Repetitive tasks never did hold his attention for that long though so when Steve manages to take him down he’s not all that surprised. Steve sighs, apparently ignoring their close proximity, “Tony I get that you get bored easily but your attention span usually isn’t this short. Something distracting you?” he asks.

Ugh, besides the beautiful creature that was currently looming over him? No. Should he feel threatened? Probably. Well, he kind of felt a little threatened, “count me down as scared and horny,” he mumbles under his breath.

Steve rolls his eyes and pulls himself up, dragging Tony with him, “seriously?” he asks.

“Yeah, you’re right, I’m making it weird. I should keep my dumb thoughts to myself but _seriously_ , if I’m not actually going to improve the system why even bother to learn it?” he asks logically.

“Working within a system can be valuable too, Tony, and the possibilities are basically endless. There’s a lot you can do by learning to move your body in different ways,” he says.

“I’m perfectly content with the ways I can currently move my body, thank you,” he says and realizes how weird that sounded, “that wasn’t supposed to be a weird sexual comment, it was supposed to reference my ability to make tech and whatnot,” he says because he didn’t want to be _that_ guy.

Steve nods, “yeah I got that, but don’t you think that’s limiting? Only learning to break the system but never learning to use it? logically you should know how to do both considering one directly effects how effectively you can do the other,” he says.

So Steve has a point, but Tony’s learned and broken all the systems he wanted to, he didn’t feel the need to learn this too. “Sure, but this is a system I can do without, I’ve been doing just fine without it thus far,” he points out.

Steve shrugs, “sure, but we were doing just fine without all the tech you’ve invented, that doesn’t mean our lives weren’t improved by it. This could improve your life too,” Steve says and damn, Tony can’t argue with that logic so off he goes to suffer under Steve’s instruction.

*

He was well and truly exhausted, enough that he was actually tired and could probably sleep but he had some things to do in the lab first. He lets himself in and JARVIS remains suspiciously quiet, Tony’s about to ask why JARVIS was giving him the cold shoulder but the answer turns around. He isn’t a moron, he’s seen Nat when shit like this happened though admittedly it wasn’t that often and Bruce was the only one who could snap her out of it, mostly because she couldn’t break Bruce like she could the others. Bucky, he knows, isn’t really Bucky anymore and he had no clue what was supposed to help.

So he did what he did best, he acted like an asshole.

“Look Bucky, I get the whole smoky eye thing, it’s hot, but you seemed to have gotten your makeup a little bit… everywhere,” he says and gestures to Bucky’s general eye area, “maybe you should talk to Clint, he’s great with makeup,” he suggests. Turns out Tony actually looked great with smoky eyes but he wasn’t surprised, his face was just that versatile and pretty.

Bucky tilts his head to the side, drawing Tony’s attention back to him, “who the hell is Bucky?” he asks.

Tony sighs, “look man, you’re having a shitty day and all that but you need to get your shit together because you the hell is Bucky,” he says flippantly. He probably should be more worried about this but for now he was strangely calm. Probably the ‘calm before you get violently fucking murdered by an ex assassin’ thing that everyone seemed so fond of talking about.

Bucky shifts slightly and a flash catches Tony’s eye, “oh, you’re holding a knife, JARVIS call Steve. Gotta admit I did not think I was going to die this way, but on the plus side it’s a weird and unusual death that people will talk about forever so I guess my dying wish will be fulfilled. Haha, get it, cuz I’m about to die, dying wish? You suck,” he tells Bucky, talking faster and more than usual.

Bucky frowns, “you talk a lot,” he says.

“Congratulations,” Tony says, “you aren’t the first person to make that criticism, but you might be the last.” This was absolutely not how he wanted to die and frankly he was a little upset that nothing was going to blow up.


	14. Enough

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief warning for mental health issues here, as a whole.

Tony has spent a lot of time in dangerous situations but a disassociated ex- HYDRA weapon was not on his list of things he has handled before. If Bucky was a weapon he’d be fine, he knew weapons, they were easy, predictable. People? They were the opposite of that, always doing something stupid, unpredictable, they weren’t something one could take apart and put back together at will. It took time to do that and even then Tony knew plenty of people who’ve been ripped apart at the seams and put back together in all sorts of fucked up ways and he has yet to see the person remain undone in the way the person who made them that way wanted.

Wanda fought back every step of the way, Natasha went on a killing spree, he fought his own captors and they had never even managed to break him, just bend him a little, Skye persevered in some surprising ways, Clint has dealt with mind control and that didn’t stick either. Bucky, he assumed, was something like the rest of the people he dealt with but all of those people dealt with things in wildly different ways and for some reason Tony had thought that maybe Steve would know how to help. That was not the case.

Bucky remains calm, not moving whatsoever while Tony waited for Steve to show up and deal with… whatever this was. If Bucky had any particular feelings about Tony they didn’t really show, he simply watched as if he was mildly curious but mostly detached from those feelings. When Steve shows up Bucky’s body language changes completely, shifting as if he was preparing for a fight and his facial expression changes too, going from mostly blank to concentrated. _Shit_. “Ugh,” he says and both Steve and Bucky turn to look at him, “what the hell, guys?” he asks.

“Get out,” Steve tells him and hell no, he was not going to have the two of them brawl in his lab. They could go brawl in Bruce’s lab. Okay so more like Bruce’s room-turned-lab, there was only so much room in the house and Tony claimed lab space and Fitsimmons claimed the basement so Bruce got the short stick.

“No, this is my space, I’m not leaving it!” he says and Bucky frowns slightly, head tilting to the side. Categorizing information no doubt.

Steve rolls his eyes, “I don’t have time for your stubbornness Tony, get out, it’s safer.”

“No offense but Bucky didn’t look like he was going to rip anyone’s faces off until you showed up so from where I’m standing you’re the problem here,” he says bluntly and admittedly he probably should have thought that through before saying it but having lived some time with Loki and Natasha he sort of lost his patience for sugar coating things. It was just easier to call things what they were regardless of the feelings that got hurt. It was more efficient.

Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, “ _excuse_ me?” he says, shifting to face Tony more than Bucky and Tony watches as Bucky adjusts himself, shifting so he was still just as prepared if Steve suddenly chose to re-focus on him.

“I said he was fine before you walked in-”

“You call this fine-”

“For the current situation yeah, not consistently recalculating body language in preparation for a fight is the better state of mind. Why is he reacting this way? You’re closer to him than anyone else,” Tony says, frowning. He would have figured Steve’s presence would sooth Bucky, maybe get him to come back to himself but it only seemed to further entrench Bucky in his dissociative state.

“Contrary to what you think you don’t know everything,” Steve snaps and _excuse_ him, Tony asked a question; there was no need for the attitude.

“Look, I figured you’d help and you haven’t so maybe you should just… go or something,” he says and Steve looks at him like he was stupid, which only pisses Tony off more. It wasn’t as if he much wanted to be stuck in a room with someone who might do god knows what to him, Bucky just seemed to react better to being alone with him than he did with Steve.

“You have no idea what you’re doing-”

“Do you?” Tony asks, interrupting Steve, “or are you going to just wing it until something works? Because if it’s option two than we’re in the same boat and you don’t have much of a right to tell me to leave considering we’d be doing the same damn thing.”

Steve goes to open his mouth but Bucky interrupts them, “enough,” he says quietly and Tony can’t tell if it’s Bucky or… not.

Steve’s expression softens and for the first time Tony sees him as something other than the irritatingly sharp alpha Sam seems to think was a good match for him. Steve steps forward slowly and Bucky regards him with suspicion but he doesn’t react too noticeably, he simply watches. “Hey Buck, are you okay? Do you know me?” he asks softly, taking another slow step forward.

Bucky takes a step back and looks at Tony. Steve, Tony thinks, tries not to react, but the pain still shows on his face anyways. “Uhh, it’s fine. Steve’s fine,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to say.

He doesn’t believe the words though and Bucky knows it, “you don’t trust him,” he says bluntly.

Tony wonders how, exactly Steve feels, because he can’t imagine what he would do if the situations were reversed and Rhodey trusted Steve more than Tony he had no idea what he’d do. Well, he had some general ideas; number one would be hurt and pissed off though not at Rhodey. So he treads lightly, sort of, he wasn’t in the habit of lying and he wasn’t going to start to save Steve some hurt feelings. “No,” he says, “I don’t trust him, but you trust him more than anyone else I’ve seen you with and I trust you,” he tells Bucky.

Bucky relaxes some and Steve flinches as if Bucky slapped him. Tony feels bad for the guy, barely, because he couldn’t imagine being Steve in this situation, watching as someone you’re connected to more than anyone else trusts a virtual stranger more than you. “You trust me?” Bucky asks quietly, “Why?”

Tony shrugs, “you’ve had more than enough opportunity to hurt me, or Steve, but you haven’t. And before you,” Tony waves his hand around and drops it when Bucky flinches, “before whatever it is that’s happened to you happened you told me that you liked to come here and watch me work, that it was calming. I think that maybe you were trying to get that back, that calm, but you didn’t realize it because you’re a little broken right now and I kind of fucked everything up by assuming Steve would fix it,” he says, trailing off because he had no idea if he was even remotely correct.

Bucky frowns and his grip on his knife tightens, “but I could hurt you,” he says, sizing Tony up.

Steve looks worried and shifts a bit; looking back and forth between Bucky and Tony like he wasn’t quite sure what to do here. Tony sighs, “then do it, I don’t have time for some long drawn out movie death scene in which I tell everyone how much I love them or some shit. If you want me dead, fine, then kill me.”

“Tony!” Steve says, looking oddly offended by the statement.

Bucky just looks confused, like he had no idea why someone would be so complicit in their own death, “why are you willing to fight for me but not yourself?” he asks.

Maybe Tony was wrong about that initial assessment of Bucky’s thought process. He shrugs, “because I low-key want to die, I figured all the stupid stunts, recklessness, and arrogance to cover a low self-confidence made that pretty obvious. Guess not,” he says flippantly, “and don’t you dare look at me like that. I don’t need your pity,” he snaps at Steve, who gives him that _look_ , the one people gave dying children because they felt bad for them. If there was anything Tony hated more than people trying to control him it was people taking pity on him.

“But you have so much fire,” Bucky says quietly.

“To do what? All I’ve managed to do with it is fuck everything up, I’ve made a mess of my tech so large I’ve spent the last two years cleaning up after myself and it’s still done nothing. What’s the point?” he snaps. He’s spent enough time thinking about it, obsessing over it in his own head, probably far too much not that he cared.

“Tony-” Steve starts and Tony cuts him off.

“No, don’t you dare treat me differently, I don’t need that. Besides, Bucky’s the one who needs help,” he points out and Steve’s attention, mercifully, shifts back to Bucky. He looks mostly like himself now, though traumatized.

*

Steve watches Tony more closely after the incident in his lab and he’s surprised that what he had mistaken for insatiable curiosity coupled with absolute stupidity was actually incredibly dangerous self-destructive behavior. And he hadn’t noticed it simply because he held a number of biases in regards to Tony Stark. It made him wonder what else he missed when he didn’t look at things more objectively, or at least consider other possibilities. He doesn’t notice Natasha watching him though, probably because she hadn’t wanted him to, until she sits down beside him, “he’d never do it. Commit suicide, I mean,” she says, getting straight to the point.

“What makes you think that?” he asks because he wasn’t so sure. Tony did too many things that would result in his imminent death for it not to be taken seriously.

“Years of observation. If he wanted to be dead he’d be dead, he’s a genius, I’m sure he could figure out an effective method of suicide but he’d never follow through on it no matter how reckless he acts. He’s a perfectionist, to a level I’ve never encountered before, if nothing else he’ll live until he thinks he’s his work is done. The problem with a perfectionist, though, is that the work is never good enough, it’s never complete. He’s fine, Steve, leave him be because the last thing that would help him is you trying to fix what he doesn’t think is a problem.” With that Natasha gets up and walks away, clearly convinced that she had warned him off. She either wasn’t as good a spy as she thought she was or she had some ulterior motive to her words because Steve was most certainly not leaving Tony be.

He decides to talk to Sam because he’s known Tony for a while, spent a lot of time with him, and in some considerably intimate ways too. “Hey,” Sam says when he spots Steve, “how’s Bucky?” he asks.

“Sleeping, you know how he gets after these sort of situations. He’ll be out for at least another four hours, probably longer. I actually wanted to talk to you about Tony though,” he says and Sam goes from mildly interested to ecstatic in point two seconds. Steve decides to crush his very false hopes fast, “in the time you’ve known Tony have you known him to be suicidal?” he asks.

Sam snorts and that pisses Steve off because this was a serious problem and no one else seemed to see it that way, “look, I know what you’re thinking. I know he has a lot of self-destructive tendencies and he’ll take just about any opportunity to punish himself but he’s not suicidal,” Sam says, using the tone that he typically chose to comfort people though it didn’t do any good.

“You said he flung himself off a building, Sam, if that isn’t suicidal I don’t know what is,” he says and _god_ he should have seen that before, that particular example was very obvious.

Sam rolls his eyes, “he jumped after spending almost two years on those wings, if he wanted to die he would have choose literally any of the previous prototypes, but he tested those on test dummies. He full well knew they would work and that’s why he jumped. He’s a perfectionist, if he didn’t think they were ready he wouldn’t have taken them to me let alone jumped off SI, he would never leave a project unfinished.”

“He left that terrorist bomb unfinished,” Steve points out, he was there, it wasn’t complete.

Sam shakes his head, “that wasn’t a project, that was an attempt to control him. He had no investment in that, no reason to complete it, especially since it would be used to kill innocent people. The suit was the project and he has yet to stop working on it, and he never will because there will always be an improvement he could add, something else he could fix. He’s that way with everything he builds, there’s always something new to follow, something more he could add to what he’s already made. He’s compelled to do more, to not leave his work unfinished. That drive is far stronger than his desire to die and it always will be, though I don’t see why this would matter to you at all. Yesterday you didn’t seem to care,” Sam points out, raising an eyebrow.

“That was before he decided to tell Bucky to kill him,” Steve says, “imagine if Bucky had followed through on it, the damage would have been irreparable.”

Sam gives him a look, “we all know that Tony would have never been killed, you wouldn’t have allowed it, and I’m sure at that point something had happened for Tony to deem Bucky safe, or at least what Tony deems safe. You aren’t interested in Tony because you think he’s a danger to Bucky; you’re interested in Tony because you’re interested in Tony. In a non-relationship way so don’t give me that look, and for gods sakes do not talk to Tony about this, it’ll do nothing but make him shut down. If you want to help Tony than play his game, learn how to manipulate him. He isn’t an idiot, he’ll figure out you’re doing it, but if he thinks the manipulations are harmless he won’t care.”

Steve frowns, “that makes no sense, he doesn’t want to be controlled but if he perceives manipulations as harmless he doesn’t care? That makes no sense,” he says.

Sam shrugs, “I’ve accepted long ago that Tony is a very long series of contradictions that just happen to be more obvious than the average person’s. If there’s no worry for his personal safety, a drain on his resources, or a danger to his friends than he doesn’t care if he’s being manipulated because there’s no perceived downside to letting it happen,” Sam says, shrugging.

Long list of contradictions was an understatement, nothing about Tony Stark made any sort of sense.

*

Tony is curled up in front of the T.V with popcorn watching some truly horrible conspiracy theories on aliens building the pyramids, apparently white people couldn’t just accept that black people were great at architecture, when Bucky walks in rubbing his eyes. “Hey,” he mumbles and throws himself on the couch next to Tony, “the fuck are you watching.”

“Alien conspiracy theories,” he says, grinning. The guy on the T.V chooses that moment to spout some theory on aliens wiping the dinosaurs out, suggesting genocide instead of extinction, and Bucky gives him a look. “I didn’t say I believed the theories, I just think they’re fun because they’re so easy to blow holes through,” he says.

Bucky looks a little less judgmental and settles in his seat, stealing some of the popcorn Tony had sitting in his lap, “what? I like popcorn,” he says and steals some more, ignoring Tony’s protests. They watch alien theories together, Tony commenting on how flimsy the theories were while Bucky seemed to take more of an interest in Tony that the show.

“Do you not believe in aliens?” Bucky asks eventually.

Tony raises an eyebrow, “do I believe in aliens? Sure, we can’t possibly be the only hospitable planet ever, that’s just… statistically unlikely, not to mention arrogant. But aliens visiting earth to help us along technologically, helping us build things though interestingly _only_ ancient structures, and _only_ structures from ancient cultures that aren’t white, yeah, okay. I mean yeah, of course life has to exist elsewhere, but assuming that they’re humanoid, have better tech, that they care about us, none of that is realistic. Only humans would be so arrogant as to believe that we’re so important that aliens have spent millennia helping us do shit while taking no credit for… what purpose? Right, none, because aliens don’t get the credit, and if they did exist I have no doubt that people would be more interested in experimenting on them than collaborating with them. We aren’t exactly the ideal group of people to help,” he says.

Bucky nods along, looking surprised at Tony’s explanation, “I never really considered racism in alien theories though I guess that’s kind of obvious,” Bucky says, frowning.

“Alien theories tend to be flimsy at best, I mean show me one real reason aliens would give a flying fuck about us aside from the fact that humanity collectively has a grandiose sense of importance and thinks that _obviously_ we’re important and then maybe, _maybe_ I’ll consider aliens have come here,” he says. “And why they are so racist, how come they never help white people build shit? Right, because obviously black people and indigenous people can’t build cool shit, white people though, obviously we can.”

He rolls his eyes and Bucky laughs softly, “you’ve never heard alien theories about white people?”

“No, it’s always Egyptian pyramids and Mayan temples, I mean I’m sure the theories exist, but they aren’t the ones repeated over and over again by popular media and discourse. Also one of these things totally mentioned the gay agenda and that is just awesome,” he says, snickering. Bucky joins in on his making fun of alien theories, pointing out very obvious oversights, and he steals more of Tony’s popcorn.

Tony isn’t expecting it when Steve shows up too but he largely suspects Sam was involved, which was confirmed when Steve said that Sam told him Bucky was up. “We’re making fun of alien theories,” Bucky says excitedly.

Steve sighs and sits down next to Bucky, watching the T.V for all of five seconds before he’s joined in on the obvious oversights the theorists had. “God, this is melting my brain,” Steve complains and leans over Bucky, stealing Tony’s popcorn.

“Why do you people steal my food, make your own,” he complains.

“Do you really need all that popcorn?” Steve asks, stealing more.

“Yes, I’m growing, the fact that I’m growing out instead of up is irrelevant,” he says, shooing Bucky out of his popcorn. Bucky ends up stealing the bowl and Tony gives up because he and Steve practically inhale the rest of his snack. Tony was already plotting his revenge, particularly against Steve because _rude_.

“You should start training some more,” Steve eventually tells Tony, apparently trying to play nice after their last encounter.

“Eat my entire ass,” Tony tells him.                                                 


	15. Get Along

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize things have been a bit dry, don't worry, action is coming! Lol

“Tony don’t touch that,” Steve says, gesturing to some papers he was shuffling though.

“Ten bucks says Tony touches the papers,” May says, grinning at her.

Natasha snorts, “you underestimate him, he’s going to shuffle them around for no reason at all except that Steve told him not to,” she says. Sure enough Tony looks back and forth between Steve and the papers and back again and shuffles them around, sticking a few papers in the garbage and taking off with a few more.

May shakes her head, “god that has got to be annoying,” she says.

Natasha shrugs, “he doesn’t do that with me, he knows better,” she says, smiling. May smiles back and Natasha gets the distinct impression that they just bonded though she isn’t quite sure over what. Maybe that they could both terrify people by smiling at them, it was a very useful talent especially when people found you beautiful.

“Sam’s making bets on hate sex,” she says, “I think he’s over estimating how much the two dislike each other, and how determined Tony is to annoy Steve. He does a very good job,” May tells her.

Natasha nods, “he seems to think they would make a good couple, and somehow Bucky factors into that? I’m not certain what dynamic he’s trying to promote but if he wants them all to get together he needs to deal with Steve and Tony thinking that the other one is a generally shitty person,” she says.

May nods in agreement, “we could probably get them together faster than Sam can with your knowledge of Tony and my knowledge of Steve and Bucky. We should make a bet” she says and smiles again, inviting Natasha into some sort of game that she assumed was something that May and her team frequently engaged in considering how invested they had all become in Clint and Coulson’s relationship, and now Steve, Tony, and Bucky.

“I bet we could,” she says, taking May up on it, “Tony is shockingly easy to manipulate if you know what you’re doing. They’ll be together by the end of the week,” she says confidently.

*

Tony has seen a lot of weird things in his life time but that still didn’t prepare him for the strangeness of finding Bucky Barnes stuck to one of his projects, “free me,” Bucky says, deadpan, sitting on the ground with his arm magnetized to the side of whatever it was Tony had built.

For a second Tony doesn’t know how to handle the situation before he bursts out laughing and examines what Bucky had gotten himself stuck to. Right, he was toying with magnetic fields to see if he could mimic Wanda’s abilities without blowing up everything in his path the way he did now but he had yet to manage to apply his discoveries to his suit. Also the effects only worked if something had metal in it so it was a less than desirable solution to his current issue. He hits the button that Bucky must have accidentally pressed to engage the magnetic fields and de-sticks the poor guy. “Bucky,” he says and hits the button that turned on the magnetic fields again, “stucky,” he says as Bucky’s arm sticks to the machine again.

Bucky looks so fucking done and Tony laughs harder, releasing Bucky again but leaving him free this time. “Sorry,” he says, “I saw an opportunity and I had to take it. How are you? You know, after that whole disassociation thing. Sorry about that by the way, I’m shit with mental health, want some strawberries?” he asks and wanders over to his fridge to get said berries.

Bucky frowns, “you worked through a lot of topics there. One, that stucky thing was not as funny as you thought it was, two, I’m fine. Mostly. Three, you and Steve are both terrible at dealing with things but mostly you suck at dealing with each other, and no, I don’t like strawberries,” he says.

“Fine, I didn’t want to share the berries anyways. Seriously though, are you alright? Because that situation went from bad, to worse, to even worse than worse and you were the one stuck in the middle. That wasn’t really fair,” he says.

Bucky considers his words for a moment and nods, “I’m fine, but thanks for apologizing. It kind of helped, in a way; Steve always treads so lightly, like I’m glass. Like I’m a weapon that could go off at any moment. You don’t do that, you never do that. It’s so refreshing to me that someone finally sees me as a person instead of HYDRA’s weapon, even when I am that weapon.”  

Tony shrugs, “I know weapons, I make them. They’re machine, predictable, a sum of their parts. People aren’t weapons Bucky, no matter how hard others may try to make them that way. People are always more than the sum of their training.” They stare at each other for enough time that Tony feels kind of awkward but he can’t look away now for no real reason other than he thinks that Bucky will win. At what, exactly, Tony didn’t know but being entered into a competition meant he had to win it even if it only existed in his own mind.

Bucky picks himself up off the ground and walks over to Tony, pulling him in to a hug, “thank you,” he says and Tony feels kind of bad for silently competing with Bucky for nothing but Bucky doesn’t know so it’s fine.

“Um,” he says for lack of a better expression of emotion. God, no wonder he only has two friends and one fail of a relationship.

Bucky steps away, “um. Sorry,” he says, looking awkward.

“Ehh, I’ve had shittier hugs. One time Rhodey almost threw me off a balcony he hugged me so enthusiastically and now there are no more drunk hugs for my safety,” he says. Rhodey had felt so bad but Tony was also drunk so he thought it was hilarious despite almost being tossed off a second story balcony with nothing but a concrete patio to break his fall. In hind sight he was a bit of a fucking idiot. Ten out of ten, he would do again.

Bucky continues to be weird and awkward so Tony decides he was going to do his own thing, ignoring Bucky’s presence for the most part. He toys with the magnetic fields on the invention he had been trying to make into a workable… thing of some sort; it was rather useless in his opinion. A late night adventure that had no practical uses presently. “That stucky Bucky thing was hilarious,” he says after some time of silence because Bucky needed to understand his hilarious comedy genius.

“We’ll see. There will be revenge,” Bucky tells him, giving him an appraising look.

“Uh huh, sure. I look forward to it,” he says and grins at Bucky, who narrows his eyes at him. The guy could have killed him like five hundred times over, Tony was convinced Bucky was actually thirty bunnies in a human suit.

“You are very irresponsible,” Bucky tells him.

“Oh but in the best ways,” he says and winks. Bucky looks traumatized and _rude_ , most people would be flattered that Tony winked at them. He wrinkles his nose at Bucky and turns to his strawberries for some sort of inspiration in invention, finding nothing but a pile of fruit though that was unsurprising. People liked to attribute muse to the artist but the scientist needed muse too, and Tony currently had none of that thanks to his rather emotionally exhausting twenty four hours.

“Something wrong?” Bucky asks after he starts playing basketball with strawberry heads and the trash can.

Tony shrugs, “no, I’m just out of ideas for now,” he says.

Bucky’s eyebrows draw together, “that’s not at all in your usual behavior, usually you’re working like you’re running out of time. You are not okay,” he says with enough certainty that for a second Tony believes him.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he insists, “I’m probably just hungry or something,” he says.

“Then eat,” Bucky tells him. Tony wrinkles his nose but Bucky doesn’t let it go, irritating him continuously until Tony finally agrees to go eat something other than strawberries.

*

Natasha runs into him on the way to the kitchen and raises an eyebrow, “Bucky irritated you into eating?” she asks when he tells her what he was doing.

“Yes, and he’s surprisingly annoying,” Tony says. He was surprised too, really, most people weren’t irritating enough to make him do things but Bucky managed through judgmental looks and sad comments.

“Hmm. Have you seen Steve around? Usually Steve is wherever Bucky is,” she says.

“No, why would I have seen Steve? Or cared if I did?” he asks.

“Right, you don’t get along with Steve, why would you have information on him? I’ll go asks Coulson,” she says.

“Well I don’t _not_ have information on him,” he says.

She tilts her head to the side, “do you though?” she asks and walks off before he can tell her that yes, he knew things about Steve. Like… Steve was friends with Bucky, that was a thing that he knew, and also Steve was a good fighter and a considerably good teacher if a little easy to fool. Tony liked to fake being hurt to get out of things frequently and Steve fell for it every time.

Ignoring Nat he walks off in the opposite direction she left in before he realizes that the kitchen was in the direction that Nat had walked off in and he needed to at least convince Bucky he ate. Next time Bucky started harassing him about food he was going to ask for the last time Bucky ate because he could guarantee that the time Bucky ate was just as long ago as the last time he ate. Then Bucky couldn’t bitch because it would be hypocritical to do so. He’d probably still complain but Tony would ignore him.

“Great,” he mumbles when he gets to the kitchen, finding Steve there cooking. If it wasn’t Bucky who harassed him into going to the kitchen he would have assumed Sam was behind this. Frankly Tony had no idea how Sam always seemed to throw him, Steve, and Bucky together so successfully without any of them knowing until they were suddenly stuck in the same room with each other. He wanted some tips, Pepper had terrible taste in men and he thought she’d be cute with Happy but despite his efforts the two always seemed to miss each other and when they did run in to one another it was always business. Maybe he’d get Sam invested in them instead, Pep deserved some time off from her work life, hell, at this point the woman needed some platonic set ups too.

Steve turns and sighs, “Sam?” he guesses and now Tony was wondering if Bucky was in on Sam’s plan, it was possible.

“Bucky actually. He’s mad that I haven’t eaten in… I don’t know, couple of days maybe? I’m fine,” he says, waving his hand around. He goes to leave but a noodle goes whizzing past his head into the wall opposite to him, “it that noodle-sticking-to-the-wall means it’s done thing true?” he asks because he didn’t know. He had yet to learn how to cook and the one time Bruce tried four people nearly died, they discovered a bee hive, and the stove ended up a block away but according to Clint the pizza tasted great.

Steve, if Tony actually liked him, would have looked hilariously done with Tony’s shit. “No, Tony, do not throw noodles at walls,” he says in a slightly irritated tone.

“Oh so you can throw noodles at walls but I can’t? What kind of bullshit is this? Give me one of those noodles,” he says, eyeing the pot of bubbling pasta.

“No, Tony. And I threw the noodle to get your attention, just eat whatever’s left of my food, I always make too much pasta because gauging how much you need is basically witch craft,” he says, eyeing the pot suspiciously.

Tony makes a face, “I can do without,” he says.

“Fine,” Steve says, “go back to your lab and tell Bucky you didn’t eat and make his anxiety worse,” he says and okay, _rude_. It was blatant manipulation but Tony already felt back for fucking with Bucky’s mental health and he didn’t want to make things even worse for the poor guy. Again. Steve must see that he’s going to stick around and frowns, “why do you care more about Bucky’s mental health than yourself in all respects? That makes no sense, you don’t even like Bucky,” he says.

“I do so!” he says, offended, “it’s you I don’t like. And even you aren’t as shitty as I thought you were, you just sort of suck,” he says and wanders a little further into the room. Steve gives him a look but doesn’t argue with him.

They sit in silence for a few minutes somewhat awkwardly because apparently neither of them were willing to break the silence first. “Stonehenge,” Steve says finally, breaking the silence.

“What?” Tony asks, frowning.

“Bucky was telling me about your racist alien theories; Stonehenge is in a predominantly white area. Other than cursory mentions of a few other places across Europe I couldn’t really find anything else, and nothing as in depth as all those pyramid theories. The Egyptians were interested in astrology, it’s been proven over and over again, obviously _they_ chose to stick their pyramids in those positions not aliens,” he says, rolling his eyes.

“Right? Alien theories piss me off, but illuminati theories are fucking hilarious. Once I watched a three hour video about this guy ranting about me being a lizard person who was basically running the world. Rhodey and I have never laughed so hard in our entire lives,” he says. The gay agenda had been mentioned in that video too, and anything that suggested that the gays had an ‘agenda’ was something Tony would watch just to make fun of. As far as he knew the gay agenda was to be treated like people and equals but other people had different ideas.

“I love illuminati theories because the lizard-person theory is _so close_ to Skrull invasions but it’s clear that they actually have no idea what Skrulls are and that makes the theories so much more amusing,” Steve says, snickering.

“Skrulls are assholes, I met one once, didn’t go well,” he says, wrinkling his nose. Shape shifters or not they weren’t very good at imitation and Loki was involved in that too, maybe Loki was an alien. He did do that ice thing.

Steve hums, “yeah, I’ve had a few be me for a while, but none have ever lasted more than three seconds in Bucky’s presence before he figures them out. I think they might have given up and left the planet, I haven’t seen any in like a year. Actually none since New York, that was a fucking disaster,” he mumbles. Something must occur to Steve because it looks like a light bulb went off in his head, “wait, you were there, in New York,” he specifies, “you saved them all from being bombed, we all thought you died because your suit wasn’t working when you fell out of that hole. You’re Iron Man,” he says.

Tony squints, “you just figured that out? And I was almost dead when Bruce hulked out and caught me and then fucking scared me back to life. It was an experience,” he says. One that left him with a shocking amount of anxiety issues.

Steve frowns, “hulked out?” he asks.

Right, in giving away all their secrets he didn’t mention the hulk bit of Bruce’s experimentation. “Yeah, don’t piss Bruce off, you won’t like him when he’s angry,” he says. His heart rate couldn’t exceed a certain rate otherwise he’d hulk out and that never ended well, mostly because Tony always got blamed for it. It was not his fault that Bruce got really upset with one of his experiments thank you. The fact that Tony altered the data had nothing to do with Bruce’s heart rate, and thankfully JARVIS had kept his opinions off the speaker system.

Steve looks curious but goes back to his food and thankfully he doesn’t feel the need to continue the small talk. Tony usually didn’t like silence and that was part of the reason he spent so much time in his lab but with Steve he preferred it. He preferred conversation that flowed freely, that wasn’t forced, and with Steve both of their actions often felt wooden, hollow. Bucky was generally silent in his presence too, but for different reasons and the silence was generally comfortable. Steve hands him a bowl of pasta after another few minutes of silence and this results in some weird staring contest between them, “ugh, thanks?” he says after the eye contact starts to get a little weird. Steve doesn’t break eye contact, “what?” he says finally because he couldn’t just look away, Steve would win.

“Are you going to eat that?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Did you poison it?” Tony asks.

Steve frowns, “why the hell would I poison your food, you’re friends with Black Widow and I value my life. Also I wouldn’t do that to the food,” he says.

Tony wrinkles his nose at the pasta, “the fact that you just quoted Hannibal Lector does not make me feel better, nor does your other reason. I mean having scary friends and you maybe being a cannibal are not acceptable reasons for not poisoning me. Not wanting to poison me because murder is wrong was the answer I was looking for,” he says.

“Eat the fucking pasta, Stark,” Steve tells him and walks back over to his own food, taking a meaningful bite while looking at Tony.

“You could have only poisoned my food and before you tell me that I would have noticed we both know I’m only selectively observant,” he says.

Steve sighs and rolls his eyes at him, “how’s Bucky?” he asks, apparently switching gears to something he found less aggravating.

Well, if he hadn’t decided to give him attitude Tony might have answered that but no, instead he shrugs at Steve and walks off with his pasta, content to test it on Bucky before he ate any.

*

Natasha shows up in his lab and he fully expects her to pester him the same way she pesters Bruce but instead she hops up on a table and starts her creepy staring thing. Natasha was one of the few people he didn’t feel compelled to stare down, probably because he had somehow concluded that looking her directly in the eye for more than a few seconds would lead to his imminent death. He had no idea how those two things had come to correlate in his mind but he wasn’t going to question it by maybe dying. “Do you have a purpose, you’re traumatizing Bucky,” he says after poor Bucky makes the mistake of looking Natasha in the eye and holding her gaze for a few seconds too long.

“You remember that thingamabob you’ve been looking for for the last few months? That thing that will bring about the end of humanity as we know it?” she asks.

Bucky give him a frightened look and he sighs, “theoretically that particle accelerator could tear a hole in reality as we know it and allow for time travel at the cost of breaking the space-time continuum because someone would inevitably screw things up and alter some part of history forever but still. It was a low probability,” he says flippantly, “practically no risk.”

Bucky squints at him, “than why do you want it back if it isn’t a danger?” he asks suspiciously and points to Bucky for pointing out the flaws in Tony’s logic.

“Because, my fine one-armed friend, I had no idea that my business partner and supposed friend was in league with several terrorist groups, HYDRA included, and sold my shit to them. Now they all think they can do the theoretical things I’ve outlined in my notes, which they are also in possession of, and if they figure out how to do the things I’ve theorized are possible we’re all fucked. Also it’s mine, I don’t like when people take my things. They’re my things,” he says. Bucky rolls his eyes at him, smiling at the familiar behavior.

Natasha looks like she’s going to throw up and Tony was half tempted to be all the more friendly with Bucky just so she left faster with some snarky remark. “So you found the thing, I assume we’re going to go get the thing?” he asks, raising an eyebrow.

Natasha sighs, “and that’s the problem, we found it in a mall, no worries it appears to just be sitting there for experiments and whatnot. But we don’t know what kind of tech might be around it or whatever so we’re going to have to send a tech expert in. That tech expert is you. We’re going to practice your spy skills!” she says excitedly and wiggles around, “also we’re going to send you with Steve. May and I figured super soldier protection would be sufficient enough to cover you going in and out and obviously we’ll have a few escape methods planned. Coulson has graciously volunteered to help,” she says with far more enthusiasm than the situation warranted.

“Okay but Bucky got a variation of the serum Steve did and he has a metal arm, he looks cooler _and_ he has all the same super solider protection Steve would have. Also I like him better,” he says, trying to counter Natasha’s plan with his own.

Nat hops of the counter and walks towards him with deadly grace, “you know all those cute Facebook pictures with two kids stuck in one ‘get along’ shirt?” she asks, stopping right in front of him with that _look_ that she got sometimes. The one was slightly more terrifying than the rest. Tony nods at her question and she continues, taking another step forward, almost into Tony’s personal space. “Well this mission is your ‘get along’ shirt with Steve, so I suggest you get along,” she says and smiles at him. He resists the urge to breathe because he was fairly certain death was coming but Natasha decides to spare him and she walks off, going to do whatever it was Natasha did. Natasha things. Probably deadly Natasha things.

“Shit, that is one terrifying woman,” Bucky says once he was sure Nat was out of ear shot.

“You haven’t watched her cry her way into a HYDRA base pretending to be a sad, hurt omega only to flip a switch and take out a room full of men five times her size, trust me, that was Natasha Lite.” He was naturally inclined to do stupid shit that could result in his imminent death so of course he had tested his boundaries with Nat. One time. It ended terribly and he would never again question her authority because he did not have a strong desire to get tortured by a pretty red head that was far too good with a knife.

Bucky gets that traumatized look again and shudders, “note to self, do not piss off the red head,” he mumbles.

“That goes with Pepper too, if you ever meet her. People say I’m a force to be reckoned with but they’ve never met Pepper, or they’re stupid enough to not take her seriously. Also Clint, but only because Natasha will retaliate for him. Clint himself is generally pretty harmless unless motivated and most of the time you can defuse the situation with pizza,” he says.

“I think you might have to worry about Coulson now too, he’s rather attached and despite looking like the sweet domestic dad type he’s kind of terrifying,” Bucky says, “once he took out two guys with guns with a bag of flour.”

“Cool. When can I do that?” Tony asks, grinning.

Bucky gives him a look, “never. And don’t you dare go try it.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         


	16. Mission X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!! Finally it has happened my friends. The kisses have come. If you have stuck around since the beginning first of all, thank you, second of all, you poor soul, third, your patience has finally paid off in this chapter. 
> 
> Bonding will come later.

“I feel like a field of screaming cabbages. No rhyme. No reason. No explanation,” Tony says, walking into the kitchen looking casual and nonchalant instead of acknowledging that incredibly odd declaration.

“Do you have an explanation for that statement?” Steve asks and Tony wrinkles his nose instead of answering, which Steve takes as a no. He sighs and decides to switch gears, “so. You ready to steal back your world destroying tech?” he asks and he doesn’t mean for it to come out as snippy as it did but he couldn’t take it back now and Tony already looked pissed off about it.

“It’s not like I can help that Obadiah sold my tech to fucking Nazis, I’m trying to get it back so people don’t get hurt so it would be nice if I got a little credit for trying to clean up my own mess,” he snaps and stomps off empty handed.

He sighs again and wonders how the hell Bucky managed to get through to someone so stubborn and volatile, not to mention irresponsible. There must be something there, Steve thought, because Tony had been willing to risk his own life in New York to save others but frankly he didn’t see it, at least not most of the time. There were times when he could see Tony as more than a volatile cocktail of human emotions that was bound to end in disaster for everyone who was there when Tony finally blew but the moments were few and far in between. Most of the time Tony was with Bucky when that happened and he was unsure if he was seeing the good in Bucky reflected in Tony or Tony’s own good traits.

“You two are terrible together,” Bucky says, appearing out of know where in silence. It had taken some time getting used to Bucky being so quite all the time, before HYDRA he had been so full of life and love and now… now he was suspicious, jumpy, afraid. He had thought that loosing Bucky had been the worst thing that had ever happened to him but bringing Bucky back had been far harder because Bucky didn’t come back, not really.

“I _try_ but he’s just so… so… easily offended,” he says, frowning.

Bucky doesn’t look like he believes that argument and frankly Steve didn’t really believe it either, but Tony just couldn’t be reasoned with. He thought he was right and he wasn’t willing to assume maybe he wasn’t so he could give Steve a chance. “Neither of you are willing to talk to one another, if you would both just stop being assholes to each other you’d probably get along fine. You don’t fight as much when I’m around,” he points out.

“That’s because you both ignore each other and talk to me, that doesn’t count. Just… talk to him, he’s not that bad, you’ll see,” Bucky says and _yeah_ , right. As if Tony would allow that without dissolving into a fit of anger and rage in less than four seconds. People seemed to be fond of making jokes about Bruce’s temper but as far as Steve could tell he was a rather laid back person who didn’t seem very easy to annoy. Tony, on the other hand, was always pissed off about something and the man was simply unwilling to let anything go. He was just so… so _stubborn_.

“Are you going to go tell him that all we have to do is talk about our feelings?” he says sarcastically and Bucky gives him a _look_. This one in particular was new because when Bucky glared before it was out of fondness and familiarity with Steve’s thought process, now he just looked annoyed.

“Yes, yes I am because I’m tired of watching you two fight about everything and I’m not fond of being stuck in another pissing contest between the two of you when the only reason you don’t get along is because you’re too much alike,” Bucky says in a matter-of-fact tone.

Steve snorts, “we are _nothing_ alike,” he says, somewhat offended that Bucky would even make the comparison.

“Really?’ Bucky says, full well not believing a word Steve said.

“He’s so god damn stubborn, and angry, and he’s so set in his opinions he refuses to see anything else but what he believes is right,” he snaps, frustrated with the damn omega. He’s proven over and over and _over_ again that he wasn’t what Tony thought he was and Tony _refused_ to see it ninety percent of the time. As if Steve would poison his _pasta_ for gods sakes. He had better things to do.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “sounds exactly like someone else I know,” he mumbles.

“I am nothing like that!” Steve protests.

“Really?” Bucky says again, highly skeptical of Steve’s argument. “If I were to sum up what kept you going before you got injected with that serum, which I’ll get to in a second, I’d say ‘spite’. You literally only fought for your life all those times you got sick because everyone kept telling you you were going to die and you didn’t accept that. You’ve always been right pissed off about injustice, which is what led you to accept being _injected with a highly experimental serum that could have killed you_ because you wanted to help people, and because you didn’t accept the limitations your own body had given you. You know what keeps Tony going? Spite. Has Tony accepted the limitations his body made for him? No, he made a fucking super suit just to blow shit up, which is exactly what you did with that damn serum. Tony is just as interested in social justice as you, if in different ways. And don’t act like you aren’t just as set in your opinions as Tony, the both of you are all or nothing in that department and it’s both of your best and worst qualities. Now stop acting like you’re so different from each other and get along, and if you don’t at least leave me out of it,” he says, waving an arm around in frustration before taking off, presumably to go rant at Tony.

“He makes a point,” someone says from the doorway and Steve looks over to find god damn Sam there with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh give up on your ridiculous pipe dream of me and Tony getting together,” he snaps, frustrated with Bucky and Tony but taking it out on Sam. He feels bad for it instantly but he can’t exactly retract the words now.

“That’s right; you best look guilty for being an asshole to me because your best friend put your ass on blast. Even if I wasn’t trying to do you cuties a favor by getting you together I’d still be annoyed with all the fighting you two do, yesterday you two were arguing over how to eat a taco. You wanna know how to eat a taco? You stick it in your mouth and chew, and yet you two were acting like eating tacos had some complicated method and y’all were personally offended that you enjoyed tacos differently. White people,” Sam says, rolling his eyes in a rather impressive manner.

“Tony and I are a horrible match. Frankly if you wanted to match me with anyone we worked nicely,” he says.

Sam sighs, “we’ve talked about this, I am a beautiful black butterfly and I must be free to roam the fields and pollinate the flowers, you have already been pollinated and butterflies to not pollinate one flower for life. It’s not in our nature,” he says gently.

Steve decides to ignore Sam’s terrible logic for now, “maybe you should pollinate Tony, it’d probably make him less bitchy,” he mumbles.

“Tony can handle his own pollination and I’ve been there. Trust me, you two are compatible, throw Bucky in there and we have a field of some very happy flowers,” Sam says, wiggling his eyebrows.

Steve frowns, “if we’re all flowers who’s the butterfly?”

“The fuck are you people talking about?” Bruce asks from just outside the doorway, looking like he was trying very hard to follow that analogy and failing. “And people say asexuals are weird,” he mumbles, shaking his head and walking away.

*

“If I wanted your head in my ass I’d’ve asked,” Tony says in response to Bucky’s very long tirade about how he and Steve had a lot in common, blah, blah.

“Are you serious?” Bucky snaps, looking irritated at Tony’s obvious comic genius.

Tony considers it, “I’m down if you are,” he says flippantly, earning a rather murderous glare. “Look, we still have to get through Nat’s version of a ‘get along’ shirt and I don’t know what it is about her but every time Nat heads some sort of mission it always goes to hell in a hand basket. She’s like… the opposite of good luck,” he says.

Bucky frowns, “bad luck?” he asks, looking confused at Tony’s weird description.

“Yes, that,” Tony says slowly, thinking over the words carefully. He was, once again, in need of sleep but it eluded him for now.

“Just… just give Steve a chance, okay? He’s trying you know and you should give him some credit for that,” Bucky says and Tony whole heartedly disagrees.

“Fine. But I’m not going to guarantee results, I am a delicate flower and Steve likes to stomp on me,” he says, pouting.

Bucky rolls his eyes hard, “you are not a delicate flower, and you do just as much stomping so don’t act like you’re a victim here. The two of you would like each other, really, you just need to stop arguing over dumb things like how to eat tacos,” Bucky says.

“He was wrong, for the record, he eats tacos wrong and I felt compelled to tell him that,” Tony says, protecting the correct way to eat tacos with his life.

“God, why am I friends with you?” Bucky mumbles.

“Because I’m a fun, intelligent, sexy person and who wouldn’t want to be friends with me?” Tony asks because clearly he was the best thing ever. _Obviously_.

For a second Bucky looks like he’s going to disagree but then he shrugs and nods in agreement with Tony’s statement. “Well,” he says, “you aren’t wrong.”

*

He’s tinkering with the design for Bucky’s arm, toying with colors, while Bucky tries to figure out what a fucking hotkey is. Never in Tony’s life has he ever come across someone so computer dense and after Bucky asked Skye what the hell a hotkey was she gave up on trying to teach him not to open every ad he saw on the fucking screen. So far Tony was semi-successful in teaching Bucky how to use a computer like a normal human, “oh hey, I googled hotkey, I know they are now,” he says and Tony is ashamed to say that he was proud of Bucky in that moment.

“Want a chocolate?” he asks.

“Stop trying to condition me into using computers better,” Bucky says, calling Tony on his shit immediately. It was worth a try to give Bucky some positive reinforcement when he managed to get something right, Tony has heard that it was very effective.

“Suit yourself,” he says and pulls some Lindt chocolates out of his drawer.

“You didn’t tell me they were Lindts! Give me one of those,” Bucky says, sticking his metal hand out for said chocolate.

“Manners, Barnes, were you born in a barn yard?” he jokes, withholding the chocolate.

“Matter of fact I was, now give me the damn chocolate,” Bucky says, pulling Tony’s chair closer to him.

Tony bails out of the chair with the chocolate, “haha, get me now,” he says and he doesn’t expect Bucky to all but leap over the chair for the chocolate so he decides to head for Dummy in a split second yelling at the bot to save his ass. Dummy, as per Dummy usual, runs straight into the wall headed in the opposite direction of Tony, “you fucking dumb sack of scraps, that wasn’t even the right direction!” he yells, narrowly dodging Bucky’s grasp.

“Jeeze, whatever training you and Steve are doing is paying off, you’re fast!” Bucky says, making another move that Tony neatly dodges. Huh. Well, he’ll give Steve credit where it’s due, he wasn’t a horrible teacher.

“Not the usual review, but I’ll take it,” he says, grinning.

“Stop making sex jokes and give me that chocolate,” Bucky tells him, making another grab for Tony’s hand so he could pry the chocolate out of it. Tony goes to dodge again but Dummy seems to have gotten his shit together long enough to wheel his stupid ass over and run directly into Tony, sending him straight into Bucky’s arms.

Bucky catches him before he bounces off his chest and lands flat on the ground, holding him steady while Tony griped Bucky’s right shoulder, trying to gather his bearings. “Ugh,” Tony says, surprised at the sudden amount of contact between the two, surprised at how close they were.

Bucky’s arm holds steady around his waist and he examines Tony’s face, rolling his eyes fondly when Tony opens his mouth to speak, “shut up, Stark,” he says and decides to take Tony’s silence into his own hands and he leans forward, gently pressing his lips to Tony’s, giving him more than enough room to pull away if he wanted.

For a second Tony isn’t sure how to react but then he figures fuck it, Bucky was hot, why the hell not? It wasn’t like he’d question it any other time, the only reason he was now was because he’d have to deal with Bucky afterwards and that was not in his usual M.O. He curls his arm around Bucky’s neck and pushes himself further into Bucky’s space, happy to take the kissing lead considering this was sort of his expertise.

Bucky, however, has other ideas and he nips at Tony’s bottom for his efforts, which, _rude_. But Tony’s curious though so he lets Bucky slide his hand up his back, his hand curling into the back of his hair and tipping his head back for better access to Tony’s mouth and okay, he could work with this. Bucky holds him steady but his kisses remain gentle, almost chaste, and when Tony tries for more Bucky decides proper punishment is biting at his damn lip. “Do you know how to do anything slow?” Bucky murmurs against Tony’s lips.

“Slow I can do, but you kiss like a fucking virgin,” Tony tells him and Bucky looks well and truly offended.

“I kiss like a _what_?” Bucky says, looking about ready to prove him wrong and _yes_ , that was the point here.

“What am I, a fucking nun? Put your lips somewhere useful,” Tony tells him and Bucky’s lips are barely back on his when some asshole starts screaming in the doorway.

They looks over to find Sam screaming and jumping around in what looked like a cross between that weird dance people do when they have to pee and a victory dance, smacking Mack’s arm and pointing at him and Bucky. “He dances like he’s white and he’s sorry,” Bucky says in Tony’s ear and he snorts loudly because yeah, Sam’s victory dance was fucking awful.

Mack looks one hundred percent done, “I have eyes, Sam, stop smacking me,” he says, deadpan.

*

Natasha had that look on her face that suggested some serious shit was about to go down and after everyone’s collective cheer after Sam had gone around the house screaming about Tony kissing Bucky Tony wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He had no idea everyone was so god damn invested, even Loki had rolled his eyes with a muttered, “finally,” before disappearing to sulk in peace. The only one who hadn’t seemed happy, unsurprisingly, was Steve and Tony could live with that no problem. What he couldn’t live with, probably, was whatever Nat had planned for this ‘get along’ mission.

Coulson and Clint had decided that they had wanted in on the action and from the looks on May’s and Bobbi’s faces they had some sort of investment in this too. Fitsimmons was generally upset that they were requested to stop analyzing data they had been collecting from Clint and Coulson’s bond to come watch Tony fail. Well, Nat hadn’t said Tony would fail, he just sort of assumed he would because he was terrible at this shit. Bruce was giving him some pitying looks and that meant he knew that Nat was up to something that Tony was going to be on the receiving end of and he didn’t get a chance to ask what her plans were before he was deployed with Steve to go do things.

Clint and Coulson happily argue like an old married couple while Steve and Tony give each other doubtful looks in the back seat of the car and at least they were on the same page here. Nat had decided that a pair of glasses, camera included, and a baseball hat was a sufficient enough disguise and Tony was wearing a pair of Clint’s purple tinted sunglasses and a hoodie with the hood up. This was a failure of costuming on epic proportions but Natasha insisted that people were incredibly unobservant and wouldn’t notice them whatsoever, even with the unusual tint of Tony’s sun glasses. He had his doubts but Natasha was more than an expert at this sort of thing so he let it go.

“This is going to go horribly,” Steve mumbles to himself.

“Agreed,” Tony mumbles back, “I suck at this stuff.”

“I meant because we suck at getting along, not because I doubt your abilities. Your abilities are just fine, you just need to learn when to apply them,” Steve says and that was sweet, he was being nice because Bucky.

“Thanks but I’m going to get us killed. I’d say it was nice knowing you but ehh,” he says honestly.

Steve surprises him by laughing at that, “fair enough,” he says and Tony decides then that maybe Bucky was right about Steve. Maybe he didn’t totally suck. Dude still had a stick a mile long stuck up his ass though.

Clint and Coulson drop them off outside the mall looking much like a pair of white moms dropping their kids off at the mall, full well knowing they were going to meet a couple of boys they liked. Tony was deeply disturbed and judging from the look on Steve’s face so was he. “Have fun you two!” Clint yells out the window and Steve winces.

Tony decides now was a good time to start walking faster.

“Slow the hell down, Stark,” Natasha says in his ear, “and wait for Steve.” He does as he’s told but only because he felt like it, not because he was afraid Nat would eat him for breakfast if he didn’t listen.

Steve catches up quickly and Natasha starts directing them through the mall, instructing them to stay close to one another. Like. Uncomfortably close to one another. “Why do we have to be standing on top of each other?” Steve eventually asks as they head up the escalator.

“Because people need to think you’re a couple,” Natasha says, dropping that bomb like it was nothing. Which. No. Absolutely not.

Steve seems to have the same idea because he looks borderline outraged by this, “I am not going to pretend I’m dating Tony, what about Bucky-”

“Oh he’s agreed to this whole thing,” Natasha says, amusement tinging her tone.

Tony and Steve exchange a glance and Tony eventually shrugs because Nat’s the expert, what the hell does he know? Maybe the couple cover had some relevance; it wasn’t like he knew the details of her plan. He wasn’t sure Nat knew Nat’s plan. “You’re just going to accept this?” Steve hisses at him, clearly morally outraged that Tony would dare agree to date his kissing buddy’s best friend so no one got shot.

“We’re in a mall with an unknowable amount of HYDRA agents with who knows what weapons and a whole lot of innocent people in between us and them, I’m not in a position to question someone who knows far more about spy work than I do about a plan she would be able to execute far better than I could. Don’t act like I’m trying to purposely squish Bucky’s feelings of some shit,” he hisses back and Steve seems to accept this answer because he looks less like he was about to explode. Natasha instructs them to look as nonchalant as possible from then forward because people remembered people who made a scene and that was the last thing they needed.

She directs them effortlessly to a storage room with a keypad next to the door. Skye informs them that they keypad has a nine digit code and they only had three tries to get it right. “Oh how the hell are we supposed to do that?” Steve hisses, glaring at the key pad in question.

Tony starts hitting buttons and Steve’s eyes practically bulge out of his head, “you stop that! We only have so many tries and you’re wasting one of them pressing random, oh hey, you got it. How’d you know?” he asks, his tone changing real damn quick and that’s what he thought.  

“It’s a prototype of a military alarm system I made years ago, obviously something else Obi thought would do great in fucking Nazi hands but that’s irrelevant, I just overrode the system with a preinstalled password I made,” he says.

“What was the password?” Steve asks,

“TonyStark,” he says, grinning and walking into the room as Steve rolls his eyes, “what? It was easy to remember and obviously no one thought to change it, or they didn’t know that TonyStark was a universal pass code that overrode whatever they chose. Who cares, HYDRA is dumb.”

Tony ruffles through a few things, stealing a few notes here and there, some his, some not, while Steve watches the door. He finds what he’s looking for and a few other pieces of his tech so he decides to liberate that stuff too when Skye swears, “okay, so it turns out they figured out that TonyStark could override their systems because it tripped an alarm that only just popped up. You guys have like five seconds to get the hell out of there, maybe,” she says.

Steve swears loudly and Tony starts looking around, quickly stuffing a few more sheets into his bag. “Are you kidding me?” Steve snaps but Tony doesn’t get a chance to respond before Nat’s telling them to use a half hidden exit and instructing them to swap glasses.

They exchange glasses while they squeeze out the door, barely managing to get out before someone else walks into the room. “Great. Now out the way you came, and quickly. They’re looking,” Natasha says.

“Was it necessary to take all that other stuff?” Steve hisses at him.

“Would you rather I leave it with Nazis?” Tony asks, incredulous.

“Fine. Don’t leave it with the Nazis, it was still irresponsible,” he mumbles.

“Not more irresponsible than leaving it with Nazis,” Tony counters as they get back onto the elevator, going down this time.

“Stop arguing,” Natasha tells them calmly, “there are three HYDRA agents on your tail but they don’t seem to realize you two are the one’s their looking for quite yet.”

“Should we prepare to engage-” Steve starts but Tony cuts him off.

“ _What_?” he asks because _no_. No. This was not what he signed up for.

“Kiss,” Natasha says.

“ _What_?” he and Steve ask in sync, giving each other disbelieving looks, “this is where I draw the-”

“Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable,” Bucky says over the com, “and they seemed to have picked out Steve’s hat. Now kiss,” he says and Steve and Tony give each other looks.

Fuck it. Tony leans forward and plants one on Steve, “god, what a bunch of homophobes,” Natasha comments, “did you see how fast they all turned away? Congrats guys, crisis averted, homophobia has made the agents think that you two are not the ones they are looking for. Go out the south door, Clint and Coulson are waiting.”

“We are having a discussion about this when we get back, Bucky,” Steve hisses into the earpiece.

Bucky giggles, “you two should have seen your faces.”

“Was this planned?” Tony asks, highly offended.

“It was a possibility,” Natasha says, “though it was far more fun in theory than in practice.”

“But Bucky-” Steve starts and Bucky sighs.

“I have nothing against you, Steve, people don’t like to watch intimate moments, throw in the fact that you’re two men would make people turn away twice as fast. When Natasha came to me with the possibility it made more than enough sense, plus I wanted to see you two panic about kissing each other. Ten out of ten, guys, would watch again,” he tells them.

“Well I’m glad _someone_ thinks so,” Tony mumbles. “Are you wearing chapstic?” he asks Steve, “because you taste like strawberries.”


	17. Get Along 2.0

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I FINALLY managed to figure out a damn way for Steve and Ton to stop god damn hating each other with the fiery passion of 5000 burning suns. That was some hard work, sorry for making y'all wait so long!

Bucky is curled up beside Tony’s desk chair with his head on Tony’s thigh and his hand wrapped around Tony’s ankle. It was unexpectedly submissive, vulnerable, and when Bucky took the position Tony was surprised but he didn’t say anything just in case Bucky was self-conscious about it, about obviously taking comfort in it. Instead he brushes Bucky’s long strands out of his face and gently massages his scalp, familiar with the position having been in it so many times. Granted he didn’t trust many people in such a vulnerable position having spent his whole life in a culture of ‘fear the alpha’ that had made itself real in a number of different ways he didn’t even want to think about. Frankly if he was Bucky, whose own situation had been far more terrifying than his own ever had, he’d never want to even cast the illusion that he _could_ be submissive ever again let alone actually assume a submissive position.

“What are you thinking, Stark?” Bucky says, shuffling around a bit so he could look up at Tony.

“I’m not thinking anything,” he says in place of an actual answer.

Bucky rolls his eyes, “that’s not true and we both know it,” he says.

Tony considers for a moment and he figures if he was in Bucky’s position he’d expect honesty so. “I… I guess I’m just surprised you’d take such a submissive position, not that there’s anything wrong with that,” he throws in because he doesn’t want Bucky to feel bad, “just with your history and all that…” he trails off lamely.

Bucky shrugs, “I used to do this with HYDRA all the time-” he starts and Tony jumps out of his chair and away from Bucky so fast he even surprised himself. His chair rolls fast across the room, hitting Dummy, whose claw turned to face the object as if Dummy was looking at it.

“Oh eww,” Tony says, waving his hands around and dancing a little, “oh my god. I am so _so_ sorry,” he says for lack of a better reaction.

Bucky lets out a long sigh and waits for Tony to calm down some. “Are you done?” he asks a few minutes later.

“No I’m not done, are you okay?” he asks because he basically just _recreated HYDRA torture_ and eww. He was not impressed with himself. 

Bucky rolls his eyes and Tony did not think it was an appropriate time to do such a thing because _hello_ , HYDRA torture? “If you’d be so kind to stop freaking out and let me explain myself?” he asks and Tony doesn’t think that Bucky should have to explain anything because none of this was _his_ fault but Bucky clearly feels the need to say something so he stays quiet. “Thank you,” he says, looking irritated, “first of all you didn’t unwittingly recreate some fucked up HYDRA torture scene. I mean I think it was supposed to be torture, putting me in such a submissive position, but that decision was made under the assumption that I adhered to hegemonic alpha norms, which I never have so. It was kind of comforting, actually, it was the only time I wasn’t Bucky, or the asset, or being tortured or whatever. I could just… _be_ ,” he says.

Tony, he supposes, understands in the abstract. He’s met plenty of people, mostly alphas contrary to popular narrative, that hated being expected to _do_ things all the time, people who just wanted some damn time off. The problem Tony had was that he never seemed to have time _on_ because everyone else liked to try and make his decisions for him, tried to control his life without even consulting him first. “Okay,” he says slowly, “I get it. Kind of,” he says.

Bucky frowns at him, “I don’t understand your need for constant control, I find it exhausting to be honest,” he says.

Tony shrugs, “the problem is that neither of us got a choice in whether or not we wanted control or not, people just assumed based on biology. To be honest I can’t believe you’d ever want to give up control, if I were you I don’t think I’d ever let anyone control me again.”

“I think you have a skewed perception of control,” Bucky says, “I mean I get it because if you even look like you might be submissive in a situation people assume they can control you. But I don’t want that, if I choose to be submissive it isn’t because I want someone to run my life, I just want to be pet and told I’m pretty once and awhile. Is that too much for a guy to ask for?”

Tony snorts, “oh I get that,” he says, “but like I swear when you tell someone ‘pet me and tell me I’m pretty’ they hear ‘control every aspect of my life, please.’ Like no, I wanted a confidence booster, not a fucking parent,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

Bucky laughs, “I know, and when an alpha says it people look at you really weird, like what, alphas can’t be told they’re pretty? Fuck you,” he says.

“Yeah,” Tony says, “actually I probably would, I’m not really that picky.”

“I would have thought you would be given all your anxieties,” Bucky says.

Tony shrugs, “ehh, stick a ball gag in their mouth and take one for the team,” he says and Bucky starts laughing.

*

Natasha sighs, “well that ended terribly. I mean I told them to kiss and they kind of touch lips, I’ve seen people give their grandmothers warmer kisses than that,” she says.

May nods, “time for phase two of the ‘get along’ shirt,” she says. Natasha raises an eyebrow because she was not aware there was a phase two to this plan.

“They seem to think the other one is the actual devil, so we lock them in a room together until they sort their shit out,” she says.

“You don’t think they’d kill each other?” Natasha asks because she was fairly certain Tony would manage to make something that would have the potential to kill Steve. He was a creative and resourceful man when he wanted to be, if terrorists couldn’t hold him she doubted they could.

“Probably not. Okay, minimal damage,” May says when Natasha looks skeptical, “point is they have something in common now. Bucky. We can play off that.”

“Tell them to get along for the sake of Bucky’s mental health, he’s been through so much, would they really want to make it worse?” she asks, picking up where May left off.

“Exactly,” Mays says, “and they both feel like they owe Bucky. It’ll work.”

“Suck it Sam, we’re going to win,” Natasha says, grinning. Sam had found out about their efforts and he had _insisted_ that he was the reason behind Tony and Bucky getting together was him, but that was absolutely false. Now there were bets as to which team could get Steve, Tony, and Bucky together faster, May and Nat, or Sam. Obviously Sam was going down.

*

He was told there would be food and instead he found fucking Steve and to add insult to injury Natasha god damn locked the two of them in the room together. “Welcome to phase two of your ‘get along’ shirt, we’ll let you out when you kiss and make up!” Natasha yells, giggling as she moved away from the door.

Steve and Tony exchange a glance, “do you think if we pretended to try and kill each other they would let us out?” Steve asks.

“No,” Tony says.

“Why not? Seems logical to me, they don’t want us dead.”

“There are cameras in here and they are undoubtedly watching us right now and you decided to air our best shot at getting out of here to the whole damn world. Congrats, you ruined us,” Tony tells him.

Steve rolls his eyes hard and Tony rolls his eyes right back because it wasn’t his fault Steve fucked it up for them, that was Steve’s fault. “Stop arguing,” Natasha’s voice says over the speaker system JARVIS used, causing both Steve and Tony jump in surprise, “you two need to stop fighting for all of our sakes but mostly Bucky’s,” he says.

“Hasn’t he been through enough without you two trying to verbally murder each other?” a new voice adds and Tony squints at the ceiling, was that Agent Glares-a-Lot? The one that hung out with Clint’s agent? “Find common ground,” the two women instruct and judging from the silence after that statement that’s how they chose to sign off.

“We hate each other,” Tony says and Steve nods, “great, we found common ground now let us out!” Nothing happens and Tony sighs, well it was worth a shot.

They sit in silence for a solid half hour at least and Tony prides himself on not being the person to break it because usually he couldn’t stand silence. “Why do we hate each other?” Steve asks and Tony’s immediate reaction was to point out that the answer was obvious but he shuts his mouth, thinking the question over for a second to humor Steve and Natasha. She’d straight up let them die in the room before she let them out still pissy at each other so he might as well try and actually do stuff.

“Okay. Why do we hate each other?” he asks and from the annoyed look on Steve’s face that wasn’t the answer he was looking for. “Okay fine, I’ll go first,” Tony says, “I’ll start with some good stuff, you aren’t a horrible teacher, you’re hot, you genuinely care about Bucky even if I know way better than you do-”

“ _Excuse_ you?” Steve yells, all but leaping off the couch to get in Tony’s face.

“Oh fuck off,” he snaps, “this using your height and bulk against me to try and establish dominance thing is a good part of why I don’t like you. Back up,” Tony says firmly and to his surprise Steve does.

“You had better have a good explanation for that,” he snaps, “you have _no idea_ who Bucky is, you have _no_ history with him-”

“Exactly,” Tony says, cutting Steve off before he goes on a needlessly long rant. “I’m not trying to insult your relationship with Bucky-”

“You could have fooled me,” he snaps and Tony rolls his eyes hard.

“Oh for gods sakes would you lose the ‘prove it’ attitude that you constantly have hanging around you? It’s irritating enough that dominant culture tells me that I’ll never live up to your example I don’t need more of that from you, thanks,” he says.

Steve gives him a look, “I don’t always have a ‘prove it’ attitude around you, I compliment you regularly and you throw it back in my face every chance you get,” he snaps.

“You do so and I do not. And by the way telling everyone I can do stuff and then pointing at me like I’m some sort of case study that proved your theories about me right all along and suggesting you know more about my own abilities than I do isn’t a compliment, its rude and condescending,” he says.

Steve deflates and frowns in confusion, “that’s how you’ve been perceiving that? I… thought I was building rapport but I guess not,” he says, sounding far more bitter than he should.

“Yeah well it’s annoying to watch you and Natasha argue over whether or not I’m capable of something right in front of me like I’m not even there. Throw in the fact that whenever I try and speak for myself you both tell me to shut up and continue talking about me as if I don’t exist in my own life and it’s a recipe for disaster,” he says and that should be _obvious_ , why the hell should he have to point this out?

Steve sighs, “well that explains a lot of your behavior,” he says, “but it doesn’t explain Bucky, you don’t know him better than I do,” he says.

Tony rubs his temples because this was going to be the end of him, he could feel it. “I’m not saying you don’t know Bucky historically, I’m saying you don’t know him currently, shut your mouth and let me explain, Steve. I have kind of a… unique understanding of Bucky if for no other reason than having gone through a really similar situation, including having a piece of tech inserted into my body for purposes I had no say in. Granted Bucky’s captors actually managed to strip him near entirely of agency and mine didn’t but that isn’t the point, we both know what it’s like to get kidnapped by terrorists and escape, barely, with our lives only to come back to a best friend who has no idea who you are any more. It’s painful.”

Steve, to his credit, looked like he was trying to understand but something was obviously falling flat. “But why does he go to you instead of me? What do you have that I don’t? Why are you the better option?” Steve asks and he stops abruptly, looking like he was about to cry and Tony felt bad for him, perhaps for the first time.

“I have the same thing Clint and Nat did that Rhodey didn’t when I came back from Afghanistan; no fucking clue what to expect. Bucky and I have no history, no back story, there are no preconceived notions of who we’re supposed to be to one another, and there’s no soul crushing disappointment when everyone involved realizes that that person no longer exists, and never will again,” he says.

“But I _don’t_ expect Bucky to be who he was, I know that he can’t be that person anymore,” Steve says, sounding somewhat desperate, “there’s no need for you,” he throws in, sounding bitter.

Tony resists the urge to roll his eyes at Steve’s stupidity. “It isn’t something you consciously do, it’s not like you’ve set out to make Bucky feel like shit it just sort of happens. It’s not like this assessment is based strictly on my own experiences either, I see the way you two interact. You’ll make some joke, or a reference, or do something else and you’ll give Bucky this expectant look because you know exactly how he would have reacted before HYDRA. Except Bucky isn’t that Bucky anymore and if he feels the way I did when I came back he probably thinks that every disappointed face you make when he misses the reference or doesn’t laugh at a joke is a failed test. He probably thinks that it’s only a matter of time before you realize he’s never going to be your Bucky again, and once you do it’s only a matter of time before you move on to better prospects,” he says.

He’s glad that Bucky’s spared the look on Steve’s face because Tony hadn’t been so lucky to escape the betrayed look on Rhodey’s face. “So what?” Steve asks, “he moves on to better prospects first? He moves on to _you_?” he says with enough bitterness and sarcasm that Tony is actually hurt by the statement despite not caring about Steve’s opinion of him.

“Wow, say that with any more of a condescending tone and I might actually believe I’m better than you,” he says sarcastically. Too late Steve realizes his mistake and by then the damage is done and Tony had already turned away.

*

“Look, I didn’t mean it like that,” Steve says some time later and Tony gives him such a withering glare that Steve actually flinches.

“I’m curious, then, exactly what you did mean by that given that you pointed out how useless and irrelevant I should be to Bucky,” he says bitterly.

Steve flinches and _good_ , Tony was hurt damnit. He thought that he and Bucky were actual friends and according to Steve, who did actually have a much better all-around knowledge of Bucky than Tony did, he wasn’t really anything. Big surprise there. “I don’t think you’re useless and irrelevant,” Steve says, sounding frustrated, “I think _I’m_ useless and irrelevant and I’m mad damnit! I’m supposed to know Bucky best, I’m supposed to be his best friend, and I’ve been fucking trying for two god damn years and failing and then you swoop your ass in here and you’re way better at this than I am and you aren’t even trying!” he yells. “I’ve spent so much god damn time trying to help Bucky and nothing seems to help, actually if anything I make it _worse_. Do you have any idea how it feels to watch some random stranger do a better job at being your best friend’s best friend than you? How much that hurts? And to add salt to the fucking wound you _hate_ yourself, you fucking _loath_ everything about you and you hold be up as some symbol of perfection for some god damn reason and it pisses me off. It pisses me off that you think you’re worthless and I’m perfect when no matter how god damn hard I try I can _never_ be as good as you, I’m never going to be able to connect with Bucky like you have. What the fuck good is perfection when the person you love the most in the world loves some asshole more than you and I fucking _hate_ you for it. I _hate_ you!” Steve yells, breathing hard.

*

“ _Now_ We’re getting somewhere,” Natasha says and Sam looks at her like she’s nuts.

“You think _this_ is improvement?” he asks skeptically.

May looks skeptical too and Natasha rolls her eyes, they had little faith in her methods. “She’s right,” someone drawls from behind them.

They turn and find Loki lingering in the doorway, smirking and Natasha kind of wants to hit him more than usual. She had no idea how he and Tony worked so long without managing to rip each other to shreds. They were far too similar to work, or at least that’s what she had thought, but they had somehow managed for far longer than she would have guessed. “You think that they’ve regressed but they haven’t, Tony sees something you two don’t and for once Natasha hasn’t underestimated him,” Loki says and she gives him a withering glare. She doesn’t underestimate anyone; it’s what makes her so good at what she does.

Loki gestures to the screen and they all turn back as Tony spoke, “you’re a fucking idiot,” he says and Natasha drops her head into her hand. God, Tony was the idiot here.

“And you’ve started to doubt him,” Loki murmurs, “you shouldn’t, he’s going to do exactly what you, May, and Sam want and bond with Steve.”

“ _Excuse_ me?” Steve says in a low voice that spoke to a hair trigger temper that was just about ready to blow and as usual Tony doesn’t perceive the damn danger. Tony _never_ perceived the damn danger except when he’s imagined it in his own mind. Loki is giving her looks but she ignores him in favor of the screen in case Tony’s stupid ass needed saving.

“You have a pretty fucked up view of love and caring and it’s making you see shit that isn’t even there. Don’t look at me like that. You seem to think that Bucky caring about me and wanting to spend time with me means he cares less about you and that makes no god damn sense. Love isn’t a zero-sum, Steve, Bucky doesn’t love you less just because he cares about me too and thinking that he does is seriously fucked up,” Tony says calmly and to his credit Steve seems to calm a little. That didn’t make Loki right.

“What do you mean?” Steve asks slowly.

“I mean that in your perception of me you assume a few things that aren’t true. First, you assume that because I can meet Bucky’s current needs better than you can that makes me the better friend, and two, you assume that Bucky’s relationship with me somehow takes from your relationship. But love doesn’t work like that; it isn’t some finite resource that can only go to one person at a time. To give you an example you’ve probably noticed, Nat and Clint meet each other’s needs far better than Bruce and Coulson could meet their respective partner’s needs. That doesn’t mean Nat and Clint care less about Bruce and Coulson. They just have a different bond with one another than they do to their romantic partners and that’s okay, the two can coexist without making one lesser than the other. Love works on a case to case basis and everyone is different, meaning you can’t love any two people the same way. Hell, sometimes you can love the same person in different ways at the same time. No matter how much Bucky may come to care about me he’ll never love me like he loves you because he literally can’t. You’re you and I’m me, we have different needs and expectations and therefore the way he cares about us will always be individual and unique,” Tony says.

Steve looks stunned and frankly he isn’t the only one. Natasha had no idea Tony had such a… complex view on love because he didn’t seem to care about a lot of people outside himself. “Told you,” Loki sing-songs, “Tony has and always will be incredibly special, unique. I was stupid to throw what we had away over something so petty,” he says quietly and with that he goes.

*

Given that they seemed to have figured out what Steve’s problem was they moved on to Tony, whose issue was already well-voiced. It was, however, difficult to see Steve as so god damn perfect after his outburst though, and Tony was the one who drew the parallels between Steve and Rhodey. He seemed so much more… human than he had before, less of the oppressive unattainable representation of perfection that Tony was constantly compared to and more of someone he could actually talk to. “Well, you seemed to have finally figured out the Command thing,” Tony points out because Steve had managed to not use one once during their whole interaction.

Steve shrugs, “yeah, I asked Fitz for a pen a few weeks ago and he practically chucked it at me because I accidentally used a Command. I felt bad and gross to I figured it was about time I learned how to… not do that,” he says.

“You should feel bad and gross,” Tony says, resorting to his sharp jabs out of habit, “I’d apologize but I’m right,” he says.

Steve shrugs, “fair enough,” he says, “except now I can’t figure out how to turn them back on but I figure that’s probably a good thing.”

Tony laughs, “wow, all or nothing, Bucky was right, we do have more in common than we thought,” he says.

“Oh we do not; I am not as contradictory and confusing as you are. I mean one second you’re all suspicious and watching us all like a hawk, and the next moment you’re giving away a bunch of information. You literally make no sense,” Steve says.

“I didn’t think the information was useful! I don’t think like you guys do, I’m a little more logical, literal. How the hell was supposed to know you guys would find anything I said useful? And really, you’re not contradictory at all? _Really_? We literally had a discussion in which you were trying to convince me that you didn’t think me lesser than you while simultaneously telling me I was lesser than you. Nothing gets more contradictory than that,” Tony points out though now they both knew that was due to Steve’s conflicting feelings.

Steve opens his mouth to refute that statement but he seems to think better of it, “yeah, you make a point.”

“I know,” Tony says, earning a look from Steve, “What? You were the one who took an active interest in my mental health while simultaneously hoping I’d still feel like shit at the end of the day because you lowkey hated me,” he says.

“Okay so maybe you aren’t the only contradictory one,” Steve says, generously giving Tony credit.

“Also-”

“Shut up, Tony, we both get it,” Steve says, giving him looks.

“Bad habit,” Tony says, smiling.

“Well it’s annoying,” Steve tells him.

“I’m annoying,” Tony says, embracing the label quickly, mostly to be annoying.

Steve rolls his eyes at him but Tony can see the change in body language, in behavior. Steve wasn’t as frustrated anymore, not in the same way at least and it showed. “So we’ve been stuck in here for like forever, do you think they’ll remember to feed us?” he asks.

The speakers overhead turn on and judging from the shuffling Tony hears someone hit the button by accident, “ _shit_ ,” he hears Natasha say before someone hits the button again and the speakers turn off.

“Guess so,” Tony says and the two start laughing.                                                                                 


	18. Cry Me a River

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief warning for flashbacks for poor Tony.

“Clint, I think you need to stop singing Frozen songs at Loki before he actually freezes your heart,” Coulson says and he means well really. But Loki knows where the food is and the food is with Clint, who is with Tony, who is with Nat, and if he fucks with Clint he’ll be fucking with Tony _and_ Nat and then he will die and not get food. Clint is safe, he is a science, he knows. Also neither Nat nor Tony liked Loki right now so they were basically waiting for a reason to kick his ass to the curb and he knew it. Clint was _safe_ ; he could sing Frozen songs at Loki through the vents all he wanted with no consequences.

“I think you over estimate how much Loki dislikes the general public. He might want me dead but he’ll leave me be,” Clint says confidently. If Loki was going to fuck him up he would have tried it by now, he’s been singing Frozen songs to Loki for like a month and a half now and he was sure Loki was tired of that before Clint even started so. Also Tony kept calling him Elsa and making jokes about being cold hearted and he hadn’t been fucked up quite yet so Clint figured if Tony was safe and Loki hated him more he hated Clint he was good.

Coulson sighs because there was no point in arguing, he has learned, because Clint didn’t listen and sometimes did exactly what Coulson didn’t want him to do just to be an asshole. Like eat really _really_ questionable food. And crawl into dumpsters and stuff. Last week he made a blind friend in there and Coulson was _really_ unimpressed with that so naturally Clint hung out with Matt more and his friend Foggy was fucking hilarious. He does, however, give Clint that passive aggressive smile thing he did when he didn’t agree with someone’s decision, Clint has learned its universal, “mmm, I think I’m right,” he says.

“Mmm, well you’re wrong,” Clint tells him, fully intending on irritating Loki more now just because Coulson told him he should stop.

“I don’t think so,” he says, passive aggressive smile still in place and wow, no wonder everyone listened to Coulson. He was so patronizing when he wanted to be. Clint was not some idiot alpha with a complex though; he was not going to be shamed into listening because that was not his style. It was, however, their new routine. Coulson told him not to do stuff; he did the stuff Coulson told him not to, and Coulson sighed and accepted he basically bonded himself to an actual five year old. Fitzsimmons was having a shit with the brain scans they were collecting from the two of them, going on and on about how the two basically predicted each other’s thoughts before they happened and automatically adjusted to each other. Well, Coulson adjusted to Clint, according to the brain scans the reverse never happened for some reason. Probably because Clint was all kinds of stubborn and no Coulson, he will not stop eating the trash.

One man’s trash is another man’s treasure after all, even if Coulson absolutely did not agree. Also Coulson’s definition of trash was very loose to say the least. He included _chips_ in his definition of trash. Even _Steve_ disagreed with that and in Clint’s opinion Steve was a tight ass, which was unnecessarily confirmed by Sam. “Clint,” Coulson says in this _tone_ he got sometimes, which is usually the kind of thing Clint didn’t pick up on because you know, half deaf, but with Coulson he swears he can hear his words echoed in his head.

“ _Coulson_ ,” he says back, adopting the same annoying passive aggressive smile Coulson had on and finally he gives up and accepts his fate as the loser of this argument, which, good. That was the way it should be.

“Everyone says you’re a very chill person but they are wrong,” Coulson tells him, narrowing his eyes at him.

Clint grins, “I pull out the arguments special for you, babe,” he says and Coulson looks so hilariously frustrated. He was trying, really, to become proficient in Clint but the more he tried the more confused he got and it was hardly Clint’s fault he was a flawed human that Coulson kept trying to neatly label. He had, according to everyone around him, never held a steady relationship and Clint could see why. Coulson liked things neat and tidy, easily controlled and micromanaged, which made him good at his job and terrible at relationships.

Clint wasn’t a pop vinyl; he couldn’t be neatly labeled and set on a shelf until Coulson had use for him and it was simultaneously sad and hilarious to watch Coulson try to desperately label him as one thing or another. Clint learned pretty early on that Coulson didn’t seem to think that a person could be to contradicting things at once, actually that appeared to be the problem with Steve and Tony too. Bucky seemed to accept that Tony made no sense, that he wasn’t a thing he could categorize neatly, that he was a _person_ and people weren’t neat and tidy and explainable but Steve was still stuck on all of Tony’s contradictions. If he and Coulson knew anything about people they would know that at any given moment everything about them could change, even if there was no visible reason.

People weren’t something that one could easily quantify and the sooner both Coulson and Steve learned that the better. Until then Clint was going to fuck with Coulson as much as humanly possible because it was fucking fun to throw the guy for a loop.

“I don’t understand you,” Coulson says, tilting his head to the side and honestly. He was _killing_ Clint here; the solution was so damn simple!

So he sighs and decides to throw Coulson a bone, “has it occurred to you that I’m not something to be understood? Stop trying to categorize me and go with the flow man, I get that I make no sense, that I’m thousands of contradictions all wrapped up into one random blonde guy. If you stop trying to stuff me into one archetype or another you’d stop driving yourself nuts trying to figure me out because you’d know there’s nothing _to_ figure out. You can’t categorize something that’s in constant flux, something that’s fluid, that makes no sense,” he says.

Of all the reactions he could have predicted from either of them he doesn’t think that Coulson’s idiot ass would be surprised that Clint was that smart, and _think it at him_. Naturally he was offended because _excuse_ him? “Did you just seriously think that you didn’t know I was that smart? Because I am genuinely pissed off about that,” he says because _seriously_? After all the bonding they’ve done Coulson manages to ruin it in a single thought.

To his credit Coulson looks shamed for it, “no, that’s what I meant!” he tries and Clint raises an eyebrow, silently asking him _what_ he meant by that, then. “I know you’re smart, very smart, I just didn’t think you were that _kind_ of smart. The philosophical kind,” he clarifies, “from what I’ve seen your intelligence is more… hands on, tactile. Not that it’s lesser, it’s just different,” he says, rambling. Clint didn’t need the clarification, he got what Coulson said before just fine but it seems to make Coulson feel better to neatly organize his words for Clint to understand clearly. He must have been good at writing essays in school. 

“I get it, I misunderstood how you used the word ‘that’ in your thoughts. You didn’t mean to imply that you thought I was stupid before, you just didn’t know I was that _kind_ of intelligent,” he says and Coulson lights up, body and mind.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, sounding relieved, “that’s what I meant.”

Clint sighs and not for the first time Clint wonders if Coulson is trying to organize Clint the way he organized himself. “I get that you like things to be neat and easy to organize, including your own thoughts, but that isn’t how I work. I’m a hot mess Coulson, emphasis on the hot, your neat little boxes will not work here and the sooner you learn that the better,” he says.

*

Tony’s words echo in his head for some time before he decides to actually say something to Bucky. He’s never been good at the whole talking thing, even with Bucky and that was before the whole HYDRA mess. “I’m not going to abandon you,” he blurts and Bucky looks up from the Rubik’s cube he was trying to figure out looking more confused by Steve than the cube.

“Tony can figure these things out in like five seconds,” he says sadly, “I don’t get it. Kinda wanna bite it but that’s illogical.” Steve got the frustration; he still kind of wanted to eat Tony. Or lick his face, at this point he didn’t even understand himself.

Steve sighs because Bucky is avoiding the situation and normally Steve would let Bucky skate over the subject, but if Tony was right he couldn’t let that happen. He couldn’t let Bucky keep thinking Steve was going to move on to someone else when that… that just wasn’t ever going to happen. “Bucky. I’m not going to abandon you,” he says again with emphasis.

Bucky drops the Rubik’s cube on the table and sighs, “for now,” he says lightly and it’s obvious he’s thought something through but Steve isn’t sure what, exactly.

“Tony… Tony said that… that you think that every time you don’t live up to my expectations you think you’ve failed some perceived test that I have and that just isn’t true. I don’t care that you’ve changed Bucky, I care that you aren’t happy and I want you to be healthier.” He gets the impression that his words don’t truly display what he’s feeling and he isn’t sure if Bucky will pick up on what he’s not saying. Normally he would assume that Bucky would, they knew each other better than they knew themselves. At least before.     

“I’m never going to _be_ healthier. This is as good as it gets and that’s why you’ll go. You’ll get fed up,” he says quietly but confidently.

“But that isn’t true,” he says and Bucky gives him doubtful looks. He thinks of explaining that Bucky has improved so much since Tony seemed to have made a pet out of him but he figures maybe it was time to change tactics because Bucky wasn’t going to believe him anyways, and he would probably be offended by being described as Tony’s pet. “Fine, okay. Would you leave me?” he asks, knowing the answer before it’s given.

“No,” Bucky says with finality, which was exactly what Steve predicted.

“Well why not? You seem to think I’ll leave you because you’re a different person but when I got the serum I became a different person and I’m not even sure that was for the better now. I changed when you died even if you weren’t around to see it, I changed when you came back, and I changed again with this whole S.H.I.E.L.D/ HYDRA mess. If I’ll leave you because you aren’t the same Bucky I knew it’s only logical to assume that you would do the same to me and you’ve had a half a dozen chances. Why haven’t you taken them?” he asks, again knowing the answer before Bucky gives it.

“That’s different,” Bucky insists, “you’re still Steve.”

“Am I? Be honest Bucky, we both know I’m not the same person I used to be when I was barely five feet tall and ninety pounds soaking wet. And I’m not the same person I was after I lost you or when I got you back, if you don’t care that I’ve changed why the hell would I care that you did?” he says logically. He’s thought this through plenty, he knows he’s right.

So does Bucky but he makes the same face Tony does when he’s going to argue his point despite being wrong and Steve sighs. They’ve been spending too much time together, he’s decided. “Bucky please do me a favor and quit while you’re ahead and refrain from arguing me on this, we both know I’m right. When I found you again you remembered me, after all the shit HYDRA did to you you remembered me. Bonds like that don’t just go away because one or both of us is frustrated or because circumstances change, we will _always_ be connected in ways I didn’t even know existed. ‘Till the end of the line,” he says quietly. He didn’t even remember _how_ that became their thing, Bucky sure as hell wouldn’t remember either, but it had been something they said to one another when the other was feeling bad and maybe Bucky would take comfort in it.

He turns out to be right and Bucky lunges forward into his arms, hugging him tightly. He hugs Bucky back, holding on just as tight, “I _love_ you Bucky and _nothing_ will ever change that,” he says fiercely.

*

So he accidentally fixed Steve’s relationship with Bucky and now he was feeling kind of upset about it when he shouldn’t be. He got it, he was some substitute Steve for Bucky until Steve got his shit together and figured out how the hell to handle Bucky and he served no real purpose anymore. It was fine, really. He had better things to do than whatever it was he was doing with Bucky anyways, like figure out what Nat and May were doing with those 084’s. Thor seemed to be helping out too but mostly because Nat was playing May into thinking she couldn’t lift that hammer Thor seemed fond of. What purpose that served Tony didn’t know but Nat has always been the ‘keep your cards’ close kind of girl. After all she _did_ play Tony into explaining everything about the Iron Man armor to her by playing dumb and cute.

It was his own fucking fault for falling for it too. If he had used his brain like the genius he was supposed to be he wouldn’t have been in that mess. Now there were finger print scans in the gloves and retina scans in the helmet so access was restricted heavily.

“What are you guys doing in here?” he asks, walking into the living room turned 084 holder. He was about eighty percent sure that Bruce and Fitzsimmons snuck in when they thought no one was paying attention and stole a few 084’s to experiment on before bringing them back. They seemed to think no one noticed but he knew for a fact that they didn’t put things back exactly right and neither Nat nor May would overlook something so obvious.

The two look up from the current 084 they were examining and give him these _looks_. The two seemed to have bonded over the fact that they could have entire conversations via blinking and Tony had yet to decide if that was weird or cool. “Nothing that concerns you,” May says after a few traded blinks with Natasha. Weird, it was weird, he’s decided.

“What’s this thing?” he asks, pointing to an open case that revealed a staff that was probably taller than him, which absolutely did not mean he was short.

Natasha and May trade some more blinks and what _was_ that? He was so going over video later to find all the micro expressions to figure out their blink language. “Nothing that concerns- don’t you dare pick that up!” May yells as Tony reaches forward to grab it. He hadn’t been overly motivated to pick the staff up before but he sure as hell was now so he picks the staff up to examine it closer.

It takes a second for the effects to kick in and _oh_. Tony blinks and suddenly he’s back in the cave with his head under water, terrorists playing ‘dunk Tony’ again. Then he’s back in New York, laughing in some reporter’s face and the words ‘Merchant of Death’ play in his head over and over until he’s back in the cave. Yinsen’s about to be burnt with that coal if Tony doesn’t comply and so he gives in because he doesn’t care if he dies, but he does care if they kill Yinsen. He can feel Yinsen’s hand in his chest fitting the outer walls that now hold his arc reactor in place. He thinks he hears Yinsen tell him that it’s alright but he thinks that that can’t possibly be true if he feels like he’s so close to dying. He wants to let go, should let go, but something keeps him there. Yinsen gives him a pleading look and Tony begs him not to go but he does and he dies. Tony’s wandering through the desert and he knows this is it. He’s dead and he embraces it, he _deserves_ it.

And then he’s back in the room with Nat and May and they both have guns pointed at him and he’s confused. “Yeah, should have listened to you,” he tells May and he sticks the staff back into the case, “that shit’s fucked up,” he says in a far more flippant tone than the situation required.

Natasha and May exchange more blinks, “I thought you said no one but you could handle that thing without going insane, that a third of that thing drove the entire _UK_ nuts,” Natasha says. Well, at least Tony understood actual words. The blinking was throwing him way off.

May lowers her gun, “I _am_ as far as I knew, at least until your pet moron picked it up. The Berserker staff is an Asguardian weapon some soldier ran off with and hid here in refuge. We’ve found some other weapons hidden here for what we assume is the same reason, like the hammer. As far as we know very few humans have the potential to use these weapons without devastating effects, as seen with the staff. Aside from New York this is the most alien interest we’ve seen with earth historically, which is why we were so taken off guard with New York, and also because we had no idea that particular brand of alien existed. Not to mention the apparent lack of a reason. We would have assumed Asguardians would have invaded first considering the amount of weapons they’ve left here, and how dangerous they can be. That thing makes the average human stronger than Steve,” May explains.

Tony watches Natasha absorb and categorize all that information for later use before turning to Tony, “what happened?” she asks. He assumes May wasn’t exactly forth coming about her experience with the staff so he shrugs.

“Don’t know, I got all these shitty flashbacks and then it was done and I was done with it,” he says vaguely. Natasha is plenty smart enough to fill in the gaps so he figures no harm is done. At least the thing stuck to adult memories because if he was going to go down Shitty Memory Lane his entire childhood would have played out too. Maybe the staff just decided to save time and skip right to the recent stuff, who knew?

Nat and May start their blinking thing again and he figures he has had enough excitement from the 084’s. He decides his lab is safer and less likely to replay some of the worst memories he has, plus Dummy needed some updating. When he gets there he expects to find the lab properly abandoned by all human life but he’s pleasantly surprised to find Bucky lingering in his usual spot by Tony’s chair toying with a prototype StarkPad. “Oh ew, put that down, it’s nowhere near done and at thing point it’s pretty much garbage,” he says, giving the prototype more credit than need be.

Bucky looks confused, “it seems to work just fine to me,” he says but that’s because he knows nothing.

“Buck, you regularly click on random internet ads for busty single Russians and claim it’s an accident, you didn’t know what hotkeys were until a few days ago, and despite having an entire arm of tech you are blissfully ignorant to how tech works. Its trash, trust me, I have a _lot_ of bug to work out before it’s even close to sellable,” he says and sits down. There was a reason Stark was considered top of the line and that was because Tony was something of a perfectionist. That also happened to be useful in his line of work because his stuff always needed improvement and there was always a demand for newer tech.

“First of all it _is_ an accident, and second I think you’re too hard on yourself,” Bucky says.

Tony snorts, “I’m not nearly hard enough,” he says before considering his words and laughing. Bucky looks unimpressed with his immaturity but lets it go.

“What’s your funniest childhood memory?” he asks a few minutes later. That was tough and not just because Howard was a piece of shit parent and his mom was largely absent, he and Rhodey had made a few gems worth of memories that were _priceless_. Like that time they accidentally blew up Howard’s yacht. Thankfully nothing else was too badly damaged in the process.

“Alright so this one time I was upset about something, I can’t remember what now, but Howard wasn’t having it. Except I wasn’t having any of Howard having none of it so we were arguing and we all know I’m an absolute whiner so Howard told me to cry him a river,” he says and Bucky snorts.

“Oh my god, you didn’t,” he says and Tony nods.

“Yes, yes I did. I cried Howard a river. At first I was like ‘how the fuck am I supposed to cry an _entire_ river?’ But then I remembered that Howard didn’t say cry a _life sized_ river, he just told me to cry a river. At that point I had already managed to cry a small bowl so I built a small scale version of Egypt and filled the Nile River with my tears and presented the cried river to Howard. It was hilarious,” he says and Bucky is laughing so hard he’s stopped making noise. Tony leaves out the part where Howard kicked his ass for being a smartass but both he and Howard knew that beating only happened because Howard was pissed Tony outsmarted him.

“That is way better than the time Steve told our art teacher he was a misogynistic fuckwit and that he was totally unsurprised his wife realized she deserved better than his dumb ass and filed for a divorce. He then proceeded to look the guy dead in the eye and dumped a bunch of paint all over his desk, but _literally_ crying someone a river? Genius,” Bucky tells him, grinning at him.

Against his better judgement he smiles back because his stupid ass has gotten emotionally attached, “well, I am a genius. Speaking of terrible teachers though, my poor first nanny was trying her damndest to try and get me to spell my name and I was _not_ having it. I would have much preferred fucking around in Howard’s lab because that was way more interesting than spelling ‘Anthony’ out ten times. I called the poor woman a fascist Nazi, I had no clue what that was, but I knew it was bad and I was done with my name,” he says.

“So what happened?” Bucky asks.

Tony shrugs, “I got busted fucking around in my dad’s lab, got my ass kicked, and still had to spell ‘Anthony' out ten times,” he says flippantly.

Bucky looks horrified, “oh my god that’s awful,” he says.

“Right? She wouldn’t even let me shorten it to ‘Tony’, which is what everyone called me. Why the hell did I have to spell out ‘Anthony’ when no one even uses that name?” he asks, completely ignoring Bucky’s reaction.                          


	19. Pentacorn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly this is just words. I don't even know. I have no clue what is happening. 
> 
> What have I done.

“You have a tendency to sleep… everywhere,” Bucky informs him but Tony already knows this because people frequently complained about it, those that managed to actually stay in his bed anyways. He vaguely remembers Bucky coming in the night before and asking to sleep in his bed, something about not being able to sleep and not wanting to worry Steve, but Tony had still been mostly asleep. It was rare he slept well and Bucky just had to interrupt one of those times, not that it mattered; Tony had passed out pretty much right after he was woken up.

“I’m aware. I like my space,” he mumbles, making no efforts to move so poor Bucky had more room. It was his bed; he wasn’t going to make the accommodations. Plus Bucky had plenty of room on the small strip of the bed he had left.

Bucky remains quiet for a few moments before he speaks again, “who do you think looked at a beehive and thought those buzzing fuckers had something good in there? Like who thought ‘those things sting and it hurts, and some people die after they’re stung, lets fucking stick my hand in there and see if they have anything worth eating in that hive’. Who did that? Who stuck their hand in the beehive?” he asks and Tony chooses to move then because that thought was actually worth discussion.

“You know what, bees die after they sting you, if it was wasps I’d be way more confused. Those little fuckers come at you until you murder the shit out of them and they serve no purpose so fuck them. Bees do good things, I mean I don’t like them, but I respect them. Fuck wasps, I hope they all die out and get replaced by a cooler bug. Something that’s a cool colour and is chill, like a funky looking caterpillar, that’d be better than wasps,” he says.

“Yellow. Jackets. Fuck those things. Anything that flies and stings actually, minus bees because shit has to get pollinated and Sam can’t do it himself even if he tries really _really_ hard,” Bucky says and Tony snorts.

“Oh he slapped the ‘beautiful butterfly’ line on you, huh?” he asks. He’s seen it done before, actually so much so that it was one of those lines that could be considered fuck-boy worthy. In Sam’s defense, though, he was always up front about what he wanted and that was something Tony had always appreciated. It was why the brief… _thing_ that they had worked so well despite Pepper’s insistence that it would not, both of them enjoyed sex and had an intense fear of commitment. It was perfect but then Sam must have gotten too attached because he pulled the butterfly line and went to pollinate elsewhere.

“Nah, he slapped it on Steve. I wasn’t exactly in a place for relationships when we got together, wait, he’s been with you too?” Bucky asks, frowning at him.

Tony shrugs, “yeah we had a thing for a few months before Sam ran off. It was nice, and there was no pressure you know?” he says and Bucky looks suddenly worried. “Just spit it out, Barnes,” Tony says, raising an eyebrow, “I’m not running anywhere,” yet.

Bucky fidgets nervously, “well,” he says, “what _are_ we?” he asks and Tony understands what he’s actually asking. What label, exactly, described their relationship?

“Dunno and I don’t really care, not exactly. Don’t look at me like that; I get the importance of labels and all that but on any sort of romantic or romantic-esque relationship label is… limiting. It has to be monogamous, there has to be sex, and romance, and love, and compromise, and, and, and, but all of those things can only be shown in really limited ways. Not to mention half of the expectations on romantic relationships make weird assumptions about what makes them functional or ‘right’. Like who cares about monogamy and why is there an assumption that having sex with more than one person means you love them both less? For some people that works and that’s fine but for people who agree to open relationships that assumption is really annoying because their relationship is constantly under the scrutiny of everyone else. What’s worse is that if the relationship fails everyone blames it on the lack of monogamy instead of pressure to conform so yeah. Romantic labels are limiting and a waste of my time and everyone else’s, do what you want, it isn’t like you’ll care any less about me because of it,” he says, finishing his rather long winded rant abruptly.

Plus, of course, it wasn’t like there was anything that was going to keep Steve and Bucky apart anyways. If literal mind wiping and torture hadn’t kept them apart Tony wasn’t arrogant to assume he would be any different. Bucky tilts his head to the side, “do you actually believe all that or are you worried that you’ll never compare to Steve?” he asks.

“Yes,” Tony says because it was the appropriate answer to both questions.

Bucky frowns, “that… doesn’t really answer my question,” he says.

“Actually it does, I can believe everything I just said and know better than to think I’d ever compare to Steve at the same time and that’s fine, really. I get it and I know you care in your own way and that’s great, but there isn’t ever going to be a time when whatever it is we have would even have a remotely equal status to you and Steve. Which is fine, but I don’t do second place, it just isn’t in my nature.”

*

“You are a raging asshole,” Steve tells him and Tony sighs.

“Yes I am, are you going to specify why I’m a raging asshole?” he asks.

“Do you even listen to anything you say?” Steve asks in place of an answer and Tony rolls his eyes.

“Sometimes, am I going to be told why you’re so pissy with me any time this century?” he asks and raises an eyebrow.

“Why is it that you think the rules never apply to you? You tell me that I shouldn’t compare myself to you because Bucky loves us both in different ways that are both perfectly valid and then basically tell Bucky that you’ll never compare so why bother. Are you fucking _kidding_ me?” he asks and oh, well that made some more sense.

“Yeah well no offense but it’s a lot easier to buy that argument when you’d be the one that forever comes out on top of any comparison between the two of us. And I did point out that he cared in his own way and fine, I get it, I do, I too have a best friend I love more than myself but when you hold a candle stick to a wild fire you don’t exactly want to be the candle stick,” he says.

Steve rubs his temples and gives Tony some truly unimpressed looks. “Okay, so your argument here, to be clear, is essentially that I will always be more necessary in Bucky’s life, our relationship will always burn brighter and that… what? You _aren’t_ just as necessary? Because you are, I’ve seen it, and been pretty pissed off about it,” he says and at least he was honest, Tony could see the honesty there. And how much it pained Steve to admit it.

Tony snorts, “yeah okay, if we were both about to be killed don’t act like he wouldn’t chose to save you and let me die. I’m not mad about it, I get it, I’d save Rhodey over him but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, which I don’t. To be clear,” he says.

Steve, of all things, laughs, “like hell you would. In my experience when you’re backed into a corner with only a few options you literally invent a new one and chose that. You wouldn’t leave Bucky to die, you’d save them both and I don’t get why you seem this… whatever this is is a zero sum situation when you yourself pointed out that it wasn’t. Why are you doing this?” Steve asks, genuinely confused.

“Gee, probably because we hate each other and it’s only a matter of time before that gets in the way of one or both of our relationships and at some point he’s going to have to choose and it would be selfish of me to assume he’d give you up. I don’t think I can take that kind of heartbreak now or, well, ever,” he says bluntly.

Steve squints in confusion, “you are so dumb. I mean you’re a genius but you’re a fucking idiot, the solution here isn’t to avoid heartbreak moron, it’s to learn to not hate me. It isn’t like it’s hard, we’ve bonded, like that time Nat and May locked us in that room. Or that time with the cabinet of dick pics that your pronged robot was freakishly fond of, we can manage… somehow,” he says and at least one of them is determined.

“Name one thing we have in common,” Tony says.

“We both care about Bucky,” Steve says with no hesitation, like it was a planned response.

“Cheap shot, give me a real answer,” he says.

“We both like dystopian movies, V for Vendetta is one of my favorite movies, and Fight Club but I don’t think that counts as dystopian. Also alien theories are dumb and my personal opinion on New York was that when some asshole opened up a portal thingy into our planet the aliens did exactly what we would have, fucked shit up and prepared to colonize. I mean we didn’t even need to leave the planet for that,” he says, wrinkling his nose.

“True, that’s a very good theory. So fine, maybe we won’t hate each other. Still doesn’t change much,” he says.

“don’t lie, you can feel the shift in our conversation so stop trying to be right and let go of your insecurities for once, it’s an attractive quality,” Steve tells him.

“Fuck you, I like my insecurities and I will not let them go, we’re friends. Now I don’t know if this happens to you but sometimes I get stir crazy in here and now is one of those times, want to sneak past Nat and get coffee or something?” he asks mostly because he was fairly certain Bobbi and Bucky were the only two capable of such feats and he had no desire to do anything with Bobbi and Bucky was avoiding him.

“Is that possible?” Steve asks.

“Surprisingly yes,” he says, “follow me.”

*

It turned out that he and Steve had a lot more in common than they initially thought. Namely they both enjoyed narrating other people’s lives in their own heads and now they were trying their hand at it with each other. “But Jared, I’m pregnant with your child,” Tony says, mocking the two guys fighting a little ways down the street.

“Oh fuck off, Kevin, mpreg only happens in fanfiction and with Trans* people and this situation is not either one of those things. You’re just pissed off because my dick is better,” Steve says.

“Well that’s not what your sister thinks,” Tony says without missing a beat and the guy Steve was mocking punches the other guy.

“Oh my god,” Steve says, “that was just too good, I can’t believe that went so well. We’re good, I wonder if that guy actually did sleep with whathisface’s sister oh ouch that punch looked like it hurt,” he says and winces.

“Probably not, they’re alpha guys, they’re probably fighting for dominance or some shit, I don’t know, alpha guys are dumber than the average guy, no offense,” he throws in after realizing that right, Steve was in the group of people Tony just insulted.

“No, it’s true. Sometimes Bucky and I will be sitting there and my brain is like ‘fight him’ and that makes no sense, I don’t want to fight Bucky. It happens with Coulson too so I’ll move all his stuff like a half inch to the left and watch him go nuts trying to figure out what’s off about his desk and honestly that’s way better than beating him up,” Steve says.

Tony snorts, “that guy is an absolute stick in the mud, how Clint deals with it I have no idea,” he says.

“He drives Coulson up the damn wall and it’s hilarious because any attempt he makes at trying to stop Clint from being an ass fails miserably. Kind of reminds me of you, actually, but messier and less of an asshole,” Steve says.

“Clint is an asshole of epic proportions, he just knows when to pick his battles and I don’t. I’ll fucking fight anything, let me at it, I’m like Alexander Hamilton. The character from Hamilton the musical, not the actual founding father,” he says.

Steve considers this and nods, “yes you are. I think I’m Lafayette but Bucky thinks I’m Burr and for some reason he thinks he’s Hercules but I think he’s actually Eliza. Coulson, we’ve decided, is obviously King George before he was replaced and he was still a little gay,” he says.

Tony laughs, “you are _so_ Burr,” he says, “but I’d rather you don’t shoot me because that would hurt and I am a wimp. Bucky is obviously John Laurens though.” He picks up the muffin he got earlier and sniffs it before taking a bite, making pleased noises as he does so.

“Do you do that with everything you eat?” Steve asks, gesturing to the muffin, “also yes, Bucky is Laurens.”

“Most stuff yeah,” he says, “never know what’s going to be in the food. So if Coulson is King George does that mean that Clint is America? Because I don’t think they’re quite that fucked up,” he says. A little messed up sure, Coulson kept trying to neatly organize Clint and that was never going to happen, but he did finally manage to mostly stop Clint from eating Taco Bell. Tony was pretty sure he still managed to eat it but Coulson liked to pretend it didn’t happen so.

“So you have a thing with food and that’s probably why you thought I poisoned your pasta. Now I feel like an asshole for being annoyed with it. But come on, imagine Coulson prancing around in period clothing, trust me it’s funny. Clint is pretty messy though and America’s a fucking disaster. Speaking of do you think Natasha could assassinate Trump? Because I’ve been tempted to ask but she frightens me and with my luck the Commands would chose then to make a comeback and I have no desire to die,” he says.

“I do not have a thing with food,” Tony says, “it’s perfectly logical. Coulson prancing around is amusing sans the period clothing because it would never happen, does he ever leave the suit? Clint says he’s never seen him without it and I’m like eighty percent sure that he’s tried at least twice to sleep in Coulson’s bed _just_ to see if he sleeps in something other than his suit. As for Nat, she’s not so bad so long as she doesn’t hate you and trust me, she’d let you know if she hated you. And yeah, she could definitely take Trump out, we’ve even made a few plans, but we’re curious to see if someone else does it first,” he says. When he heard Trump was running for president he had called and offered the guy a billion dollars to stop but he hung up, on _Tony Stark_. He was not impressed. Also he hasn’t stopped so.

“We should probably get her to kill Trump before he says that he’s going to deport eleven million people for existing while brown. Oh wait,” Steve says sarcastically.

“I take it you aren’t fond of Trump?” Tony asks not that he thought anyone should be. The guy was a trash can to say the least and Tony had had the misfortune of meeting him. He insulted Pepper in less than five seconds and when Tony told him off for doing so he insulted _Tony_. Well, not that it mattered, he was a thousand times more successful and he always would be and none of the people he’s pointed that out to over the years have been impressed by that. It was hardly his fault it was true, also no one insulted Pepper and got away with it. Trump should have been glad Tony decided to say something instead of Pepper because Pepper was far more scathing than he was.

Steve gives him a look, “ _no one_ should be fond of Trump, the guy said he might have agreed with Japanese internment camps. He’s a misogynist, he’s ableist, he literally hates everyone that isn’t just like him. Who could possibly support that? He’s basically HYDRA except he’s one person instead of an organization. Just. Ugh,” he says, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

“True. Nat could do it though, just in case, we can take his rat hair as a trophy,” Tony says.

Steve makes a face, “eww, why would we do that? We all have better hair and I see no reason for us to suffer like that. On another note we haven’t killed each other yet so that’s nice, see, we can get along,” he says.

“We’re in public,” Tony says, “we aren’t savages, we fight when there aren’t other people around to witness our spat and get hurt, unlike those two,” he says and nods back to the two guys who had started fighting a few minutes ago and had finally stopped after someone managed to pull the two apart.

Steve hums in agreement, “you should still apologize to Bucky for being an asshole,” he says.

“Yeah maybe,” Tony says flippantly.

“ _Definitely_ ,” Steve says, giving him a look.

“I’ll consider it.”

“You’ll do it.”

“Maybe.”                                                                                                               


End file.
